The need for still-image transfer during home nursing visits

We investigated home-care needs in Ikaalinen, a small Finnish town. Two nurses completed questionnaires during all their home visits. During the 17 weeks of the study, the two nurses made 313 home visits, most to people aged 70-90 years. According to the questionnaire results, a visit by a general practitioner (GP) to the patient's house could not have been replaced by still-image transmission from a digital camera in any of the cases. Thus there was no need for image transfer by e-mail between nurse and GP. The nurses did take pictures and showed them to the GP during their weekly meetings, but they nonetheless felt that they did not need to transfer them from the patient's home. When the reasons for the visits were classified as service delivery (no nursing required), check-up visit or drug service (no nursing required), blood test or other treatment test (nurse required) or nursing work, it became apparent that 38% of the visits would not have required someone with nursing skills. If these visits had been made by the home-help service instead, the annual saving for the Ikaalinen district would have been nearly FM240,000.