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Purpose: The National Health Insurance Service implemented a tele-consultation pilot project for in-home care using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). This study aims to investigate nurses’, doctors’, and families’ perceptions on the project.Methods: Using the pilot project database and perception survey data, this study provides a description of the satisfaction, re-participation motivation, and experiences of nurses, doctors, and families.Results: Tele-consultation for home-visit nursing was used to monitor health conditions and problems, such as pain and blood pressure, or health counseling for home-care beneficiaries. The beneficiaries' families showed higher levels of satisfaction than the service providers. Nurses and doctors had relatively positive perceptions about the usefulness of sharing information about beneficiaries, timeliness of providing nursing care, and convenience of communication. Meanwhile, nurses and doctors had negative perceptions of the sufficiency and accuracy of information obtained from tele-consultation, implying the necessity of adopting more advanced ICTs.Conclusion: This study suggests what must be considered when designing a tele-consultation service model in long-term care settings, especially in the home-visit nursing care setting. Innovative approaches using ICTs should be taken to improve home-visit nursing care quality in the era of super-aging and COVID-19.

It is important to improve accessibility to healthcare for disabled elders, a policy agenda in South Korea. The aim of this study was to investigate part-time doctors and nurses' perceptions of tele-consultation using information and communication technology (ICT) for elders in long term care institutions. Methods: Data used for this study was from the database of the tele-consultation pilot project done from November 2016 to October 2017 by National Health Insurance Service (NHIS). In addition, a questionnaire survey was conducted with part-time doctors and nurses who participated in the pilot project. Results: In 89 long term care institutions, a total of 1,258 residents had 2,202 tele-consultations on their health problems over 1 year. Both part-time doctors and nurses had low satisfaction with the tele-consultation pilot project but negatively recognized its usefulness. They were also interested in continuing to participate in the tele-consultation project, if it was modified effectively. Conclusion:The results of this study confirm that considerable modification of this tele-consultation model is needed. It should be helpful for policy makers, researchers, and practitioners to understand the problems and come up with new ideas for further development.

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Purpose: This study was conducted to explore the meaning and contents of high-quality aged care facilities and provide basic data for evaluation of service quality in such facilities. Methods:The focus group interviews and participants consisted of two user groups, for a total of 16 family caregivers of the elderly living in facilities and four service provider groups, for a total of 26 chief managers and caregivers working in aged care facilities. All interviews were recorded and transcribed as they occurred. Content analysis was used and debriefing notes were referred to in order to analyze the data. Results: Four themes of a high-quality aged care facility emerged from the analysis; 1) a place to rest for comfortable later years; 2) systematic value-based management; 3) providing professional care; 4) comprehensive service provision in response to diverse needs. Conclusion: The findings of the study showed the importance of client centered care and ethical mindset of providers, which had not been included in the existing quality evaluation programs. Based on these results, medical treatments, end-of-life care and more comprehensive and extended services including family care need to be provided in facilities to ensure good quality aged care.