From COVID-19 Pandemic to Patient Safety: A New "Spring" for Telemedicine or a Boomerang Effect?

Francesco De Micco; Vittorio Fineschi; Giuseppe Banfi; Paola Frati; Antonio Oliva; Guido Vittorio Travaini; Mario Picozzi; Giuseppe Curcio; Leandro Pecchia; Tommasangelo Petitti; Rossana Alloni; Enrico Rosati; Anna De Benedictis; Vittoradolfo Tambone

doi:10.3389/fmed.2022.901788

From COVID-19 Pandemic to Patient Safety: A New "Spring" for Telemedicine or a Boomerang Effect?

Front Med (Lausanne). 2022 Jun 15:9:901788. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.901788. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Bioethics and Humanities Research Unit, Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
² Department of Anatomical, Histological, Forensic and Orthopaedic Sciences (SAIMLAL), Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
³ IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, Milan, Italy.
⁴ Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy.
⁵ Department of Health Surveillance and Bioethics, Section of Legal Medicine, Fondazione Policlinico A. Gemelli IRCCS, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy.
⁶ Department of Biotechnology and Science of Life, Center for Clinical Ethics, Insubria University, Varese, Italy.
⁷ Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy.
⁸ Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
⁹ Hygiene, Public Health and Statistics, Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
¹⁰ Department of Medical Affairs, Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi Onlus, Rome, Italy.
¹¹ Casa di Cura "Auxologico Roma-Buon Pastore", Rome, Italy.
¹² Nursing Science Research Unit, Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Rome, Italy.

Abstract

During the Covid-19 health emergency, telemedicine was an essential asset through which health systems strengthened their response during the critical phase of the pandemic. According to the post-pandemic economic reform plans of many countries, telemedicine will not be limited to a tool for responding to an emergency condition but it will become a structural resource that will contribute to the reorganization of Healthcare Systems and enable the transfer of part of health care from the hospital to the home-based care. However, scientific evidences have shown that health care delivered through telemedicine can be burdened by numerous ethical and legal issues. Although there is an emerging discussion on patient safety issues related to the use of telemedicine, there is a lack of reseraches specifically designed to investigate patient safety. On the contrary, it would be necessary to determine standards and specific application rules in order to ensure safety. This paper examines the telemedicine-risk profiles and proposes a position statement for clinical risk management to support continuous improvement in the safety of health care delivered through telemedicine.

Keywords: Ethics of Job Well Done; Healthcare risk Management; clinical governance (CG); patient safety; quality of care (QoC); systemic clinical risk management; telemedicine.