How Technology Can Help Family Caregivers Become Partners in Care

Education and information are important tools for supporting family caregivers during transitions of care. Family Caregiving and Transitional Care: A Critical Review, a new report from the Family Caregiver Alliance (FCA), suggests that technology could help make those tools even more effective.

The report stresses the important role that family caregivers can play in helping patients transition from hospital to home. Yet, few care transition programs actively engage caregivers as partners during times of transition, says FCA. The report also finds fault with the degree to which medical professionals and providers of long-term services and supports work together to ease care transitions.

Using Technology to Educate Caregivers

The FCA report credits home-based remote monitoring devices with helping many patients avoid a hospital readmission. But the report’s technology section also emphasizes the critical role technology can play in providing education and decision support to caregivers both before and after a hospital discharge. The report examines a number of ways technology can help prepare family caregivers for their work:

• Closed-circuit education: The FCA report spotlights “Next Step in Care,” a support program created by the United Hospital Fund. The program developed podcasts on medication management. Hospitals use their closed-circuit television systems to broadcast these programs to caregivers before a family member leaves the hospital. 
  
  

• Patient Information Centers: The report suggests that acute- and post-acute care settings could distribute a variety of education programs to family caregivers through Patient Information Centers. These centers could make computer-based training modules and closed-circuit video games available to caregivers before discharge. They could also loan out hand-held devices so caregivers could take education programs home with them.
  
  

• Information on the go: Care transition programs could adapt counseling and teaching programs so caregivers can access them on personal devices like iPhones or iPads. This would help caregivers get needed information while making health care decisions. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems could also provide instant responses to caregiver questions. 
  
  

• Ongoing support: Internet sites that let caregivers interact with their peers can reduce isolation. Some sites could also help caregivers connect with family and friends and organize caregiving tasks. Care transition programs could sponsor their own online support networks. Or they could tell caregivers about exiting sites that might help them.

Using Technology to Educate Health Professionals

Technology solutions don’t always provide direct assistance to caregivers. Instead, some solutions educate health professionals so they can do a better job of helping caregivers.

Providers like Kaiser Permanente are using video ethnography to connect with patients and caregivers and understand their experience of care. Video ethnography involves using video technology to interview and observe patients and caregivers in the home setting. After reviewing the video, care transition programs can then take steps to improve their services and supports.

Kaiser Permanente recently used video ethnography to explore the experiences of heart failure patients and their caregivers. The organization then instituted changes that helped reduce hospital readmissions at one medical center from 13.6% to 9% in 6 months.