Clinician and Resident Receptivity to a New Telehealth Program

Research Objectives: To gauge the receptivity of seniors to the technology and structure of a new Telehealth program, ProMote.

Design: Residents and staff of The Evergreens Foundation took part in one of 3 focus groups: One staff-only focus group and two resident focus groups.
Participant input was sought regarding technology and program structure.

Setting: Focus groups were conducted in a hybrid setting across four lodges in Alberta.

Participants: 33 participants (residents using the telehealth program and staff members) participated in the focus groups.

Interventions: Data was transcribed using Otter.ai, Trint, and manually. A content analysis was completed using MAXQDA to create themes and subthemes.

Main Outcome Measures: The main themes identified were: Best parts of the ProMote program, Worst parts of the Program, Receptivity of the residents to the technology, and Recommended changes to the program. These represented the receptivity of the seniors to the technology and their satisfaction with the program.

Results: The main findings of the study are as follows:
Best parts of the ProMote program: Reported improvement in the residents' functional mobility and pain relief. Staff members reported resident excitement and curiosity about the technology.

Worst parts of the program: Staff members faced coordination challenges and residents disliked the limited appointment times. Minor challenges with the technology were reported.

Receptivity of the residents to the technology: Residents expressed satisfaction with program accessibility and shared their comfort with the technology. They expressed a willingness to recommend the program to others and to return to the program themselves.

Recommended changes to the program: Participants recommended a longer exercise timeline plus exercise demonstrations.

Conclusions: The results indicate that older adults are willing to adopt new technology. Overall, the main recommendations were technology improvements and adding more services (such as eye assessments, hearing assessments, etc). Future programs attempting to provide virtual care can benefit from the learnings of this program to better support seniors, regardless of their competency with technology.

Author(s) Disclosures: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.