A pilot study of usefulness of clinician-patient videoconferencing for making routine medical decisions in the nursing home.

Objectives: To pilot and assess the role of videoconferencing in clinicians' medical decision-making and their interactions with nursing home residents (NHRs).

Design: Paired virtual and bedside examinations. Face-to-face (FTF) examination of NHRs by off-site clinicians immediately followed videoconferencing between the same clinician-NHR pair.

Clinicians' and patients' experiences and satisfaction with unscheduled, nighttime, Internet-based video conferencing for assessing acute medical problems in a nursing facility.

Videoconferencing between patients and their physicians can increase patients' access to healthcare. Unscheduled videoconferencing can benefit patients with acute medical problems but has not been studied extensively. We conducted a clinical trial of unscheduled, nighttime videoconferencing in a nursing home, where on-call physicians usually provide care by telephone from remote locations.

Conducting a study of Internet-based video conferencing for assessing acute medical problems in a nursing facility.

We expect the use of real-time, interactive video conferencing to grow, due to more affordable technology and new health policies. Building and implementing portable systems to enable conferencing between physicians and patients requires durable equipment, committed staff, reliable service, and adequate protection and capture of data. We are studying the use of Internet-based conferencing between on-call physicians and patients residing in a nursing facility.