A transition towards digital home visits in social care and home health care during the corona pandemic

Background: Physical meetings are favoured in social care and home health service in Sweden, both when it comes to internal meetings or home visits at citizens residence. During the pandemic, physical meetings were supposed to decrease as much as possible to avoid the virus to spread. One solution was to digitize as many meetings as possible. Transforming meetings from physical to digital is not without flaws, especially not when it comes to meetings with citizens needing care. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the transition toward increased use of digital home visits in social care and home health care in a Swedish municipality. Results: A web survey was sent out to understand which meetings could be transformed into digital meetings and related challenges. The web-survey was sent to co-workers in home health care and social care in a middle-seized municipality in Sweden and included questions with predetermined and open-ended answers. The results showed that not all meetings could be transformed, like meetings with citizens with hearing or cognitive impairments. Challenges related to the transformation were instability in technical equipment, the professions’ and citizens’ knowledge of handling technical equipment, and access to technical equipment support.Conclusions: Despite the challenges did the co-workers digitize meetings whenever possible, adding operational and problem-solving attitude to the transformation. Due to this study’s limitation, like respondents from one municipality and the pandemic’s length, we intend to investigate further and understand the development of the transformation and how knowledge in the area increases.

Home Health Service Provision After Hurricane Harvey

ABSTRACTObjective:To determine the extent of service disruption among home health agencies impacted by Hurricane Harvey.Methods:Structured interviews with optional open-ended questions were conducted with home health agencies in and around Houston, Texas. A random sample of 277 agencies was selected and contacted via telephone during the study period, from February to May of 2018.Results:Only 45% of 122 participating agencies indicated that their offices were open during Hurricane Harvey, and three-fourths reported that home visits were disrupted. The length of disruption varied: 7% reported a disruption of 1 day or less and 46% indicated a disruption of 1 week or longer. Disruption occurred even though nearly all (99%) of the agencies had—and close to all (92%) of them activated—an emergency preparedness plan.Conclusions:Although most of the participating home health agencies activated their emergency preparedness plan, significant disruption in home health services occurred. While agencies are required to have clear, detailed plans in place, gaps in effective implementation of emergency preparedness plans remain.