Getting the Full Picture: Nurses Use Video Visits to Enhance Telephone Triage for Homebound Patients

This pilot project evaluated nurse-led video visits as an adjunct to telephone triage in home-based primary care. Video visits were facilitated by community health workers (CHW), a telehealth coordinator, and Wi-Fi enabled tablets on a video visit platform. Data were collected and analyzed for visit type, indication, and characteristics. More than half were CHW-facilitated, with skin complaints as the most common reason. Video visits allowed nurses to better understand the patient situation than telephone triage alone. CHW-facilitated visits took longer but yielded more assessment information. Nurses involved in this project found nurse-led video visits a beneficial tool in better understanding the total clinical and social picture of older adults in our home-based primary care practice when compared to telephone triage alone.