Assessing home care agencies' readiness for telehealth.

Home healthcare is facing a set of challenging new realities in the 21st century such as funding limitations and increased life expectancy. Many believe that the use of telehealth enabling patients at home to interact with nurses at the clinical site using videoconferencing technology, will be a cost-effective solution to providing quality care services. Many agencies have adopted or are planning on implementing a telehealth solution. Level of agencies' readiness can lead to a lower level of risk, and a more successful innovation outcome. We developed a framework for assessing home care agencies' readiness for telehealth consisting of 35 items. This instrument can be used as a decision support tool for agencies that are about to implement a telehealth system as well as a formative or summative evaluation tool for agencies already utilizing telehealth.