Facilitators and challenges in the adoption of a virtual nurse visit in the home health setting.

The COVID-19 pandemic created an opportunity to incorporate nurse-led virtual home care visits into heart failure patients' plan of care. As a supplemental nurse visit to traditional in-person home visits, the Virtual Nurse Visit (VNV) service was deployed using Zoom teleconferencing technology enabling telehealth nurses to remotely communicate, assess, and educate their patients. This mixed methods study explored heart failure patients' abilities, experience, and satisfaction to use and adopt a virtual nurse visit. Sociodemographic, semi-structured interview questions, and the System Usability Scale data were collected. Thirty-four participants completed the study. Over half of participants perceived the VNV usable and four qualitative themes emerged: perceived safety during COVID-19, preferences for care delivery, user experiences and challenges, and satisfaction with the VNV service. Findings from this study builds the science around telehealth that will inform future studies examining this type of nurse-led virtual visit and subsequent patient outcomes.