Patient safety risks associated with telecare

A recent open access article in BMC Health Services Research examined the literature on telecare for patients at home and identified eleven types of risks to patient safety.  Risks included lack of patient or staff knowledge and understanding, technology issues, changes to staff workload, accessibility problems, lack of clear guidelines, poor patient compliance and the nature of the homecare environment.

The authors concluded that there is a need to better identify risks and thus avoid potential harm to patients utilising telecare services.  They offer some suggestions as to how this could be done.

Patient safety risks associated with telecare:a systematic review and narrative synthesis of the literature  Guise V, Anderson J, Wiig S.  BMC Health Services Research. 2014 Nov 25;14(1):588.