Telemedicine improves patient postoperative care

Patients recovering from vascular surgery say that telemedicine has improved their satisfaction with postoperative care as well as their quality of life.

That’s the finding of a recent study published in the Annals of Vascular Surgery. The study compared outcomes between patients who received telehealth remote monitoring with those who received standard treatment, including routine discharge instructions and no electronic monitoring.

Of the 30 participants in study, 16 patients received tablets running the Enform Care Management Platform—a telemedicine app developed by TeleMed 2020—which enabled communication with nurses.

In addition, participants in the intervention group also received at-home monitoring kits that included image capture, weight scales, blood pressure cuffs, thermometers, as well as oxygen saturation monitors to remotely transmit critical health information to their caregivers.

Patients in the intervention group—who were discharged from the hospital—weighed themselves, took their temperatures, measured their heart rates and blood pressure, and determined their blood oxygen levels through the app, as well as completed a wellness and symptom survey.

“Care managers used the TeleMed 2020 Enform platform to review alerts, real-time patient data and dialogue with the care team,” according to the study.

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The study’s authors found that the telehealth solution “successfully merged remotely generated information with care manager interaction” and was “technically feasible and provided some benefit to patients in geographically disparate areas.”

Further, they reported that the telemedicine technology—which was associated with higher patient satisfaction and improvement in quality of life—was embraced by participants who “took advantage of increased access to healthcare professionals.”

Nonetheless, the study’s results showed that hospital readmission and wound infection rates did not differ significantly between the intervention and control groups, which the researchers attributed to the small sample size of participants.

Going forward, the authors conclude that a “larger study, preferably multicenter, is warranted and under consideration.”