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Running Head: IMPLEMENTATION OF TELEHEALTH PLATFORM

Implementation of Telehealth Platform
Institution Affiliation
Course

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IMPLEMENTATION OF TELEHEALTH PLATFORM

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Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has strained efficient healthcare services in hospitals
leading to adoption of more innovative treatment plans, such as Telehealth. Most of the
hospitals have adopted this innovation in bid to strike a balance between service provision
and ensuring safety of their healthcare providers. Exposure of healthcare providers during
their duty can lead to them contracting COVID-19; hence Telehealth would aid in preventing
this occurrence. According to Nagel, Pomerleau, and Penner (2013) Telehealth involves
enablement and conveyance of services related to health including medical care, patient and
provider education, self-care, and health information services through digital communication
technologies.
Telehealth platforms will purely involve constant communications between service
care providers and their clients who are the patients. These communications can be conducted
though technologies such as mobile health applications, live video conferencing, and mobile
phone calls (Park, 2006). The essay seeks to explore the challenges of implementing
Telehealth platform in a mental health facility and their possible solutions. The essay will
also outline expected outcomes of such implementation hence providing a comprehensive
analysis regarding the telehealth implementation issue.
Key Stakeholders
Stakeholders refers to parties who have an interest in a certain company, program or
innovation. According to Friedman and Miles (2006), stakeholders can either directly affect
or be affected by the company or the innovation being implemented. This therefore, shows
that there is always a direct link of the effects between the stakeholders and the company or
the innovation, such as Telehealth that is being unveiled.

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In this case, the key stakeholders of Telehealth implementation in the mental health
facility include the health care providers, patients, individuals designing the platform, and the
key decision makers in the facility. This is because these are the commonly considered
stakeholders in healthcare field (Hearld et al., 2012). They decision makers include the
facility’s top management, such as the directors. Health care providers are stakeholders
because they will be directly affected by the decision to implement this healthcare platform.
Implementing the decision means that the risks of the healthcare providers contracting
COVID-19 will be reduced, while the decision of not implementing will mean that these
doctors, for example, are exposed to the high risks of contracting the virus.
Patients are also key shareholders because the implementation decision will directly
affect them. By implementing the Telehealth platform in the mental health facility, treatment
patterns of the patients will be altered as they will have to adopt to the newly implemented
platforms hence the direct effect (Culyer, 2005). Individuals designing the telehealth platform
for the health facility are responsible for its viability hence can directly affect this innovation.
If poor strategies are designed, for example, the platform may not be successful in the mental
health centre wishing to implement it.
Straus, Tetroe, and Graham (2011) notes that key decision makers are always
regarded as key stakeholders at any company or innovation. This is because their decisions
always determine the direction to which such company or innovation can take; hence directly
affecting it. In this case, the key decision makers of the mental health centre are among the
key stakeholders because their decision will determine whether the Telehealth platform will
be implemented in the facility or not.
In the implementation process, the identified stakeholders especially those who are
directly affected should be taken good care of. This means that the implementation process

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should evaluate their situations and strike a balance by coming up with ideas that can benefit
each of them. In this case, the affected stakeholders include the healthcare providers in the
mental health centre and the patients. The decision to implement the telehealth platform in
the facility should benefit each one of them and this can occur by eliminating some of the
challenges associated with such implementation (Straus, Tetroe, and Graham, 2011).
Telehealth platform should, for example, benefit patients by ensuring that the medical
services are offered efficiently through the platform. For the health care providers, the
platform implementation should ensure that they are in constant communications with their
patients and that there is delivery of efficient services while not being exposed to the virus.
Problem Identification
The exercise of problem identification involves identifying various challenges that
can affect a particular process. In this case, problem identification will point out the
challenges that will affect the implementation of Telehealth platform at Directions for living
Outpatient Men...