Leveraging Information Technology to Address Challenges And Opportunities Of Informal Caregivers In Home Care Within The 30- Day Medicare Reimbursement Plan: A Qualitative Study.
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Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2020-01-01
Type of Work
Department
Information Systems
Program
Information Systems
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Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan thorugh a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
Subjects
Abstract
In home care, especially within the 30-day Medicare plan, there has been limited systematically collected evidence about the day-to-day challenges of family caregivers and how information technology (IT) tools can be helpful in effectively addressing those challenges. Therefore, this dissertations focused on developing a comprehensive understanding of the challenges experienced by caregivers during Medicare-reimbursed home care episodes, exploring the current levels of IT adoption, learning about the contextual factors influencing adoption, and identifying the opportunities presented by IT to address caregivers' challenges. Using maximum-variation sampling criteria for recruitment, informal caregivers of patients from one home health agency in the United States were recruited as participants of this study. This dissertations adopted an interview-based qualitative approach to collect and analyze rich contextual data from caregivers. Results show a prevalence of family conflicts within the home care space. Caregivers expressed lack of essential resources, a series of devastating losses as well as challenges with dealing with the uncertainty and change. The incompatibilities of their realities with societal norms and expectations, organizational structures and even their own conceived outcome resulted in isolation and created difficulties at work. The participants heavily depended on online resources such as online search engines to find information for care-giving and online networks to socialize. Customized IT solutions, particularly high quality, organized, and searchable online resources, patient portals, utilizing existing social networks, and tele-health can be very effective as support mechanisms to reinforce existing solutions, and serve as a platform to conceptualize and create new solutions. This dissertations sheds light on the actual challenges and how IT can be realistically leveraged, which can be useful in revising clinical practices and various policies for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of caregivers.