Home Telecaring Services, Inc. (HTSI)

Our 2008 Focus: Telehospice

Telehospice, the delivery of some (not all, by any means) end-of-life care services using telecommunication means, is today’s newest frontier of telehealthcare programming. Increasingly, conventional means of delivering hospice care are becoming less accessible, owing to staffing shortages, increased numbers of patients needing hospice services, and expanding geographical distances between home hospice patients and care organizations. The key value of telehospice: hands down, it is offering more opportunities than ever before to provide continuous care for patients in the last chapters of their lives.

HTSI will focus its efforts in telehospice education during 2008, by:

• Researching and assembling materials for new, targeted tele-tool use in hospice.
• Providing informational lectures and/or print materials about the frontier of telehospice to hospice care providers at hospice facilities and teaching organizations in the U.S. Details will be provided on what’s working in telehospice and why learning about and using it is necessary today.
• A quarterly newsletter will be assembled on current information in telehospice—there will be focuses on tools to supplement conventional care in hospice, and details on a range of audio-visual and other tools available for caregivers’ coping needs. Projected availability of the newsletter will be Fall 2008, well in time for distribution during the annual recognition of national Hospice Month in November.
• Coaching services will be provided for telehospice and, possibly, “Open Access” hospice programs already underway or getting underway. For instance, HTSI may develop an information bank for those programs to be accessed online, as needed, with FAQs and answers made available.