The Essence of Telehealth Readiness in Rural Communities: An Organizational Perspective

Abstract

This paper examines telehealth readiness from an organizational perspective and explores the essence of telehealth readiness among four domains, namely, patients, practitioners, the public, and organizations in rural Canadian communities. Because readiness is a necessary requirement for the successful implementation of an innovation, it is important to identify and ensure core factors of readiness before costly investments are made. The findings presented here derive from a qualitative phenomenological research approach involving semistructured telephone interviews with four key informants (respondents). The data identified four categories of readiness in an organizational setting: core readiness, engagement, structural readiness, and nonreadiness. Understanding organizational readiness within rural and remote communities is an important step for the successful implementation of telehealth services into existing systems of health care.