Telehealth and the quadruple aim

 “Telehealth is defined as the use of electronic information and telecommunication technologies to support long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health, and health administration. Technologies include video conferencing, the internet, store-and-forward imaging, streaming media, and terrestrial and wireless communications”.

Telehealth presents unique opportunities to connect providers with patients and to improve patient and provider relationships. These improved relationships can be linked to the 4th arm of the Triple Aim more recently referred to as the Quadruple Aim. The fourth aim examines the importance of provider satisfaction concurrently with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) quality metric of patient satisfaction.

The Quadruple Aim is a concept that furthers the Institute of Healthcare improvements (IHI) Triple Aim which consists of 3 principles -improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing per capita costs of health care . Healthcare leaders and policy makers will need to quickly adopt new technological interventions like telehealth to help meet the CMS Meaningful measures initiatives and the Health and Human Services (HHS) Healthy People 2020 goals of achieving health equity, reducing health disparities, and reducing premature deaths in a systematic way which will lead to healthier healthcare ecosystems and improved population health.

The World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity . Telehealth is an emerging technology that can help to address the physical, mental, and social well -being of rural populations, caregivers and providers. Telehealth has many forms which includes but are not limited to computers, mobile phones and wearable devices. Making healthcare and information easier to access can help alleviate some of the stress associated with current healthcare barriers which prevent or limit access and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, telehealth could be a transformative public health tool because of its ability to reach rural populations by increasing access to much needed care .

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, telehealth could be a transformative public health tool because of its ability to reach rural populations by increasing access to much needed care.

Journal of Health Policy & Management is an open access scholarly periodical that publishes peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts. The journal is intended to enhance communication among health system researchers, policy and decision makers, legislators, practitioners, educators, administrators, students, and other types of allied health professionals in the research and healthcare delivery systems.

 Author may submit the manuscripts through the journal's online submission