Determining the Impact of Telehealth on Rural and Remote Health Care Service Delivery in Canada
type: CreativeWork
description: There are disparities in health status and outcomes between rural and remote residents and their urban counterparts, and these disparities are caused in part by inequitable access to health services. For decades provincial and territorial decision makers have implemented numerous health human resource policies, most commonly financial incentives, to attract health providers to rural and remote areas to alleviate the inequity of access. The effect of these policies has been temporary in that health providers responding to these incentives rarely established permanent practices in rural and remote communities. In addition, these policies rarely address the fact that specialized health services and infrastructure are highly concentrated in urban centres. In recent decades, decision makers have explored the use of information and communication technology via provincial and regional telehealth programs to provide more specialized health services that were previously unavailable in underserviced communities. Using the widely adopted Triple Aim framework developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, three modes of telehealth (telemedicine, health help lines, and online mental health therapy) are evaluated for their ability to simultaneously improve population health through improved access and improve the patient experience in rural and remote areas while maintaining or decreasing the per capita costs of health care. The analysis showed that telehelath does have the ability to improve access to health services, but low utilization, especially among provinces with high percent rurality, would indicate that its impact on access has been minimal. Additionally, there is evidence that health help lines may actually increase disparities by increasing the number of unnecessary visits to physicians and emergency departments. Data on changes in health status as a result of telehealth use is not available, and health outcomes have only been assessed as part of pilot project…
abstract: There are disparities in health status and outcomes between rural and remote residents and their urban counterparts, and these disparities are caused in part by inequitable access to health services. For decades provincial and territorial decision makers have implemented numerous health human resource policies, most commonly financial incentives, to attract health providers to rural and remote areas to alleviate the inequity of access. The effect of these policies has been temporary in that health providers responding to these incentives rarely established permanent practices in rural and remote communities. In addition, these policies rarely address the fact that specialized health services and infrastructure are highly concentrated in urban centres. In recent decades, decision makers have explored the use of information and communication technology via provincial and regional telehealth programs to provide more specialized health services that were previously unavailable in underserviced communities. Using the widely adopted Triple Aim framework developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, three modes of telehealth (telemedicine, health help lines, and online mental health therapy) are evaluated for their ability to simultaneously improve population health through improved access and improve the patient experience in rural and remote areas while maintaining or decreasing the per capita costs of health care. The analysis showed that telehelath does have the ability to improve access to health services, but low utilization, especially among provinces with high percent rurality, would indicate that its impact on access has been minimal. Additionally, there is evidence that health help lines may actually increase disparities by increasing the number of unnecessary visits to physicians and emergency departments. Data on changes in health status as a result of telehealth use is not available, and health outcomes have only been assessed as part of pilot project…
author: Hill, Kimberly Anne
language: en
date published: 2014-03
date modified: 2026-07-24T04:03:41Z
provider: University of Regina
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/10294/5489

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.82465/4586