The need for still-image transfer during home nursing visits

We investigated home-care needs in Ikaalinen, a small Finnish town. Two nur ses completed questionnaires during all their home visits. During the 17 we eks of the study, the two nurses made 313 home visits, most to people aged 70-90 years. According to the questionnaire results, a visit by a general p ractitioner (CP) to the patient's house could not have been replaced by sti ll-image transmission from a digital camera in any of the cases. Thus there was no need for image transfer by email between nurse and CP. The nurses d id take pictures and showed them to the GP during their weekly meetings, bu t they nonetheless felt that they did not need to transfer them from the pa tient's home. When the reasons for the visits were classified as service de livery (no nursing required), check-up visit or drug service (no nursing re quired), blood test or other treatment test (nurse required) or nursing wor k, it became apparent that 38% of the visits would not have required someon e with nursing skills. If these visits had been made by the home-help servi ce instead, the annual saving for the Ikaalinen district would have been ne arly FM240,000.