Telehealth Education for Geriatric Populations

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2021

Authors

Wilder, Alyssa
Jenkins, Joseph
Gibson, John
Hadley, Lesca

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Introduction The acceptance and use of telehealth by geriatric patients are a result of many factors, including perceived value, attitude, perceived behavior control, and resistance. Technology anxiety is often a large contributor to the negative reception of telehealth by geriatric patients. Will educational handouts lead to increased usage of telehealth services among geriatric patients? Methods Geriatrics patients were informed about the clinics telehealth services and offered two educational handouts about the telehealth service. The handouts were provided to patients over the course of a month as well as given to the medical assistant for reference when speaking to patients over the phone. The electronic health record was used to record the number of visits. Results The table shows that the number of geriatric patients utilizing the telehealth services decreased from 10.3% to 8.7% during the course of the project. Upon further investigation, the number of telehealth visits for the entire clinic had decreased in the month of August. This appears to be correlated with the declining number of COVID-19 cases in Port Lavaca during this time frame. Conclusions Though the number of telehealth visits decreased, patients felt more informed about what to expect. The medical assistant used the handouts to determine which patients could use the service. For this project the intent was to provide physical handouts could refer to after an in-person visit. Moving forward, it would be beneficial to add the flyers or other instructions to the patient portal, for easy access to all patients.

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