Posted on: March 15, 2022
Virtual tools are becoming more deeply integrated into our health system, and Island Health clients are seeing some of the biggest benefits as the range of virtual services expand.
Two of Island Health's services, Home Health Monitoring and Intensive Home Monitoring have come together as Community Virtual Care, to support clients living with chronic disease or COVID-19 symptoms to manage their conditions from the comfort of their homes using remote patient monitoring technology.
Community Virtual Care offers virtual visits and the phone to support clients at home. The team monitors vital signs and symptoms, and provides self-management coaching and education to clients with COPD, Heart Failure, Chronic Kidney Disease, Diabetes, Hypertension, heat exhaustion and COVID-19.
Clients are provided with an LTE-enabled tablet, blood pressure cuff, oximeter, and weight scale. They measure their biometrics and answer questions designed to increase awareness about their condition. The information is sent electronically to the monitoring nurses who check for alerts and data changes. Monitoring data is viewable on the client's electronic health record and significant data trends are sent to the client's Primary Care Provider.
By merging and regionalizing these services, the larger team can support more clients after hours and on weekends (08:00 – 20:00, seven days a week). The program will be adding additional services in 2022, including intensive diabetes monitoring for clients with complicated diabetes, virtual palliative care monitoring, caregiver support, and a virtual pharmacist.
Community Virtual Care brings healthcare into people's homes and helps connect to clients living in rural and remote communities, including First Nations communities, who might otherwise need to travel hours to access medical care. Community Virtual Care supports the delivery of client-centered healthcare and provides timely access to medical advice and medications for our clients.
Anyone can refer clients to Community Virtual Care via Community Access, the Community Health Services intake process. Contact communityvirtualcare@islandhealth.ca for more information, or to request Community Virtual Care posters or pamphlets for your community health care setting.