Virtual Care Delivery: Opportunities, Models, and Outcomes

Contemporary healthcare is patient centered in terms of quality care, access, and affordable options. Stepped and integrated care models emphasize customized care, interdisciplinary teamwork, and integration of services based on co-location, shared responsibility, and funding. Telepsychiatry (TP) is as effective as in-person care and has been broadly used to provide a range of mental health services to primary care and other healthcare settings. The literature reveals that TP leverages a wide array of treatments at a distance to clinics, nursing homes, and patient homes and how telemedicine models of care provide flexibility for TP services to patients, clinicians, and caregivers. There is steady growth of the TP evidence base, and older adults and their families are as open to using TP as other populations and report high satisfaction. TP outcomes for older adults are comparable to in-person care and quite in parallel with outcomes for patients of all ages. TP also enables more patient points of entry, addresses patient–clinician needs-skill mismatches, and leverages other resources. Telemedicine in general and TP in particular overcome geographical, physical limitations, and access-to-care obstacles. More formal TP research studies and health services effectiveness studies are needed for older adults in culturally diverse populations, related to team-based or interdisciplinary care, and employing full stepped or integrated care models.