Author / President of Taiwan Society of Home Health Care, Yu Sang-Ju (3rd Apr, 2020)
Dear colleagues and friends
This is Yu Sang-Ju, president of Taiwan Society of Home Health Care. COVID-19 has been pandemic since this March and had an overwhelming impact on the healthcare system worldwide. Home health care agencies are no exception in this fight. Despite that Taiwan has contained the contagion with great efforts both from the government and the people, we should still be prepared for community transmission. Every country, every city, and every community is under the risk of COVID-19 outbreaks.
To reduce the spread of COVID-19 and maintain the operation of home healthcare, TSOHHC made the following recommendations.
Objectives:
- Minimize the risk of infection of home health care providers to maintain the quality of care.
- Provide various forms of medical services to meet the needs of home care patients.
- Develop new models to integrate home health care and telemedicine.
Propositions:
- Establish Home-triage protocols as standard operating procedures of home health care agencies.
- Healthcare facilities should divide staff into separated operational teams to reduce the risk of cluster outbreak and assign dedicated healthcare personnel to each home care patient to reduce the spread of infection.
- Implement telemedicine, encourage cross-organizational collaboration, and enhance interdisciplinary work in home healthcare practice.
We would like to share our ideas containing coronavirus. At the same time, we call for further collaboration worldwide for better home health care .
