Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed care delivery and influenced telehealth adoption by rehabilitation professionals and their patients. The purpose of this paper is to describe a pediatric health system's telehealth services pre-pandemic and how those services were scaled during the pandemic. A secondary aim is to provide a roadmap for the operational delivery of telehealth and rehabilitation services, including transition to a hybrid care delivery model. Findings suggested that telehealth can be rapidly scaled to address patient healthcare needs for an early intervention population during a pandemic. Telehealth use during the pandemic helped ensure continuity of care and likely reduced the risk of exposure to patients and staff to the virus. Benefits included enhanced access to care, and savings in time and money for families. Interestingly, as the pandemic declined, the use of telehealth services declined due to patient preference, with many families opting to request a return to in-person care.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed care delivery and influenced telehealth adoption by rehabilitation professionals and their patients
Total visits from occupational therapy (OT) accounted for 19%, physical therapy (PT) accounted for 24% and SLP accounted for 57% of total virtual visits provided
Note. *data collected from April, 2020 through September 2021 When analyzing evaluation and treatment visits, we found higher numbers of treatment visits compared to evaluation visits across all disciplines (Figure 4.)
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed care delivery and influenced telehealth adoption by rehabilitation professionals and their patients. Telehealth has been proposed as a way to increase accessibility and enhance continuity of care for vulnerable populations with disabilities (Hailey et al, 2011) This led to virtual rehabilitation program development in an attempt to provide equitable access to therapy for individuals who live in remote geographic locations and who are physically or economically disadvantaged (Theodoros et al, 2008). The use of telehealth to deliver EI speech language pathology (SLP) services has been found to result in significant increases in behaviors that promote social and communication interactions, with participants showing improvements in all domains measured during home-based sessions facilitated by the parents (Baharav & Reiser, 2010). Several outcomes are achievable though telehealth and include improved participation in activities of daily living, health and wellness, role competence, well-being, and quality of life (AOTA, 2018; Bican et al, 2021)
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