Case Study: Early Detection of a Change in Condition
The Case’s Summary
Mrs. C. was subjected to home treatment via telemonitor due to her repeated hospitalizations. Thanks to this, a pulmonary embolism was detected in the patient early on, enabling its fast and efficient treatment. Further hospitalization was necessary to make a precise diagnosis and administer proper therapy for Mrs. C. With the circumstances at hand, it is safe to say that telemonitoring practically saved the patient’s life.
1. Possible outcomes for this patient without the introduction of the telemonitoring system to her medical care routine.
The most likely outcome is the progression of pulmonary embolism with the quite probable fatal consequences for Mrs. C., considering her age and history of atrial fibrillation. Pulmonary emboli develop from thrombi in the venous system of the lower parts of the body – usually, legs – rise up to the lungs, and block the main pulmonary artery and/or the lobar branches, resulting in such symptoms as shortage of breath, hypoxia, chest pains (Ouellette, 2016, para. 1), and humid cough that sometimes produces blood-streaked rheum (“Pulmonary Embolism: Symptoms and Causes,” 2016, para. 5). The fact that Mrs. C. also suffered from a type of arrhythmia did not make matters easier as this condition, combined with labored respiration, could heighten the chance of a heart failure at her age.
2. Identifying potential costs and costs savings for home telemonitoring.
According to Dale Yamamoto’s research on the topic, one visit to a physician’s office on average costs $98 for a patient with the commercial coverage and $83 for a patient with the medicare coverage (2014, p. 6). If the patient prefers to use the telehealth services, he or she pays only about $50 per one visit from a telehealth vendor, which means saving $33-$48 every time he or she chooses telehealth over a conventional medical service at a hospital (Yamamoto, 2014, p. 6). According to the figures, provided in the study, using telehealth might result in patients saving approximately 70% of the price of care that they “would have used in the other settings” and also in reducing the patients’ overall reluctance to manage their health due to the stiff prices of healthcare services (Yamamoto, 2014, p. 7). This provides a good ground for concluding that telehealth and telenursing seem to be the most patient-friendly variation of medical assistance provided by the healthcare institutions so far.
3. The advantages and disadvantages of telehealth and telenursing from a patient's perspective.
The main advantage of telenursing and telehealth for the patients is the new practice’s high affordability at a lesser expense. As it has been established in the previous section, using the telehealth services enables the patients to receive qualitative care in the comfort of their home at a moderate price. It makes the practice look more economic and generally attractive from a patient’s point of view, which motivates him or her to take better care of his or her health and use the healthcare facilities without much hesitation or reason to postpone the …
