| Course | NU 715 Telehealth to Expand Health Care Access and Delivery |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 1 |
| Paper type | Telehealth modality brief |
| Length | About 760 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | MSN |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NU 715 Unit 1
Four Telehealth Modalities for a Rural Heart Failure Service: What Each Gives Up at a Distance and What Distance Gives Back
Student Name
Department of Nursing, Herzing University
NU 715: Telehealth to Expand Health Care Access and Delivery
Instructor Name
January 21, 2026
Four Telehealth Modalities for a Rural Heart Failure Service: What Each Gives Up at a Distance and What Distance Gives Back
Purpose and Setting
This brief is a reference for a composite rural health system in Kansas, with a 25-bed critical access hospital and four outlying clinics, that is planning remote care for adults recently discharged with heart failure. Many of these patients live 40 to 90 minutes from the hospital, and follow-up within a week of discharge, which reduces readmission risk, is often missed because of distance and transport. The brief defines four modalities by what actually happens in each, then states what the clinician gives up and what distance hands back.
Live Video
What happens: clinician and patient see and hear each other at the same moment, through a video platform on the patient's device or at a clinic with a video room. Someone else may be present at the patient's end: a family member, or a nurse or medical assistant at a clinic site.
What the clinician gives up: touch, and with it much of the physical examination, including auscultation of heart and lungs, palpation of the liver edge, and pressing on ankles to judge edema. Vital signs depend on the patient's own devices or a person at the patient's end.
What distance gives back: a visit without a long drive, often sooner after discharge; a view of the patient's home, including where medications are kept and what is in the kitchen; and easier participation by a caregiver who works.
Store-and-Forward
What happens: information, such as photos, a recorded video of the patient walking, an electrocardiogram tracing, or a questionnaire, is captured at one time and reviewed by a clinician later. The two are never in contact at the same moment.
What the clinician gives up: the ability to ask a follow-up question in the moment, and control over how the information was captured.
What distance gives back: flexibility for both, and a record that can be compared over time, such as photos of ankle swelling taken on the same day each week.
Remote Patient Monitoring
What happens: devices in the home, such as a scale, blood pressure cuff, and pulse oximeter, transmit readings automatically, usually daily, to a team that reviews them against thresholds and calls the patient when a reading crosses one.
What the clinician gives up: the context around a number. A two-kilogram weight gain may be fluid or may be a holiday meal, and only a conversation can tell.
What distance gives back: a daily view of trends that no clinic visit can match, and the chance to act on early weight gain before the patient becomes short of breath. For heart failure, the evidence is stronger than for many conditions: a systematic review found that structured telephone support and noninvasive telemonitoring reduced heart failure hospitalizations, with telemonitoring also associated with lower mortality (Inglis et al., 2015), and a large randomized trial of a structured remote management program reported fewer days lost to unplanned cardiovascular hospitalization or death (Koehler et al., 2018).
Telephone
What happens: a voice call, with no video.
What the clinician gives up: everything visual, including the patient's color, breathing effort, and swelling, as well as the view of the home.
What distance gives back: the widest reach of any modality. It works for patients without broadband, without a smartphone, or with limited comfort with technology, who are common among older rural patients. For structured symptom and medication checks, it is often enough.
What the Brief Means for This Service
No single modality fits every step. A reasonable design would use live video for the first post-discharge visit within seven days, ideally with a clinic nurse at an outlying site to obtain vital signs and examine for edema, so that the clinician recovers some of the lost examination; remote monitoring of daily weight and blood pressure for 30 days; telephone calls to act on monitoring alerts and for patients who cannot use video; and store-and-forward photos of ankles when edema is a question. Patient satisfaction with telehealth is generally high across studies (Kruse et al., 2017), but satisfaction does not show whether a modality captures what matters clinically, which is why the choice of modality for each step follows from what that step needs to assess.
Cautions
Each modality carries requirements not discussed here, including licensure when patients are in another state, payment rules that differ by payer and modality, equipment, and the patients who cannot use it. Those questions are addressed separately before the service design is final.
References
Inglis, S. C., Clark, R. A., Dierckx, R., Prieto-Merino, D., & Cleland, J. G. F. (2015). Structured telephone support or non-invasive telemonitoring for patients with heart failure. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (10), Article CD007228. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD007228.pub3
Koehler, F., Koehler, K., Deckwart, O., Prescher, S., Wegscheider, K., Kirwan, B.-A., Winkler, S., Vettorazzi, E., Bruch, L., Oeff, M., Zugck, C., Doerr, G., Naegele, H., Störk, S., Butter, C., Sechtem, U., Angermann, C., Gola, G., Prondzinsky, R., ... Stangl, K. (2018). Efficacy of telemedical interventional management in patients with heart failure (TIM-HF2): A randomised, controlled, parallel-group, unmasked trial. The Lancet, 392(10152), 1047-1057. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31880-4
Kruse, C. S., Krowski, N., Rodriguez, B., Tran, L., Vela, J., & Brooks, M. (2017). Telehealth and patient satisfaction: A systematic review and narrative analysis. BMJ Open, 7(8), Article e016242. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016242
Reading the NU 715 Unit 1 instructions
Unit 1 asks you to describe the main telehealth modalities and how each might serve a population or service you choose. Expect to define live video, store-and-forward, remote patient monitoring and audio-only care, explain what each can and cannot do clinically, and support claims with evidence. Many versions ask you to recommend modalities for a specific setting. Check whether your section expects a table or a narrative. A defined service, such as heart failure follow-up or wound care, makes the comparison concrete. Telephone care is often counted as telehealth, but payers treat it differently, so note that. Cite reviews or trials for each modality's effect rather than vendor descriptions, and keep licensure and payment for a short cautions section, since later units cover them in depth.
How this NU 715 Unit 1 example is built
The brief opens with purpose and setting, so the reader knows which system and patients it serves. Each modality section uses three labels: what happens, what is lost and what is gained. That parallel structure makes the comparison easy to read. Live video loses auscultation and touch but gains the home environment. Store-and-forward gives specialists time to review images without scheduling. Remote monitoring trades the visit for a daily stream of weights and blood pressures, with trial evidence on outcomes. Telephone loses sight but reaches patients without devices or broadband. The section on this service assigns each modality to a step of the care pathway rather than choosing one. A short cautions section lists issues that later units must settle, such as cross-state licensure.
Reading the NU 715 Unit 1 rubric
The Herzing rubric here typically rewards accurate definitions of each modality, analysis of clinical strengths and limits, use of evidence, application to the chosen setting and writing. Definition points require correct distinctions, especially between remote monitoring and store-and-forward. The analysis criterion looks for specific losses and gains rather than general statements that telehealth improves access. Evidence earns full credit when each modality's claims rest on systematic reviews or trials, such as the Cochrane review of structured telephone support and telemonitoring. Application is often weighted heavily and is scored on whether modalities are matched to steps of care in the setting. A cautions section may be credited for awareness of later topics. The last row covers a comparison that reads cleanly and APA 7 references, including Kruse and colleagues on rural telehealth barriers.
NU 715 Unit 1 help: mistakes that cost points
The usual Unit 1 problem is describing modalities in vendor language, all benefits and no losses. Another frequent issue is confusing remote patient monitoring with store-and-forward. Students often leave out telephone care or dismiss it, even though it may be the only option for some rural patients. Evidence is sometimes general, about telehealth overall, rather than tied to a modality and condition. A brief that recommends live video for everything misses the point of comparing. Setting details are often vague. Some papers wander into licensure and payment at length. Finally, choose a setting and population you can describe specifically, because the application section depends on knowing which steps of care each modality would serve.
Get a NU 715 Unit 1 example written to your instructions
Send the Unit 1 instructions and the rubric from your NU 715 classroom, along with the service or population your brief has to cover. We write a custom example with the modalities distinguished by what actually happens, losses and gains stated for each, and one service matched to a mode, returned in 24 to 48 hours. The first custom sample is free.
More NU 715 papers and MSN samples
- NU 715 Unit 2: Remote examination protocol
- NU 715 Unit 3: Encounter suitability criteria
- NU 715 Unit 4: State licensure and compact analysis
- NU 715 Unit 5: Coverage and payment assessment
- NU 715 Unit 6: Digital access equity audit
- NU 715 Unit 7: Equipment and connectivity standard
- NU 715 Unit 8: Telehealth program plan
- NU 726 Unit 1: Professional role paper
- NU 730 Unit 1: Systems analysis
- NU 760 Unit 1: Practice problem statement
- NU 780 Unit 1: Community assessment
NU 715 Unit 1 questions, answered
Is telephone care really telehealth?
Clinically it usually is, and for payment purposes it often is not, which is exactly why the brief keeps it separate. Audio-only reaches patients who have neither a smartphone nor bandwidth, so dropping it narrows access in the name of tidiness. Say what it can and cannot support clinically, and check current payer rules for your own state rather than assuming they still match last year.
How current do the sources need to be?
Recent, and recency matters more here than in most courses, because rules, platforms and payment policy have all changed repeatedly. Prefer current professional guidance and peer-reviewed work from the last few years, and treat anything about coverage or licensure as something to verify against the body that issues it. Older evidence remains useful for clinical outcomes and is unreliable for what is permitted today.
Does the brief need a table?
Only where it earns its place. A comparison table makes a good summary once the modalities have been handled properly in prose, and a poor substitute for that handling when it arrives instead. If you include one, keep every column consistent across the rows and let nothing appear in it that the text has not already established.
Where can I find a free NU 715 Unit 1 sample paper?
The whole NU 715 Unit 1 rural heart failure modality brief is free here, all four modalities with what each loses and gains. If you need the comparison for a different service, such as wound care or behavioral health, a custom brief can be built on it.
What are the four main telehealth modalities?
Live video, store-and-forward, remote patient monitoring and audio-only telephone care. This sample compares all four for a rural heart failure service and assigns each to a step, such as video for the first visit after discharge and monitoring for daily weights.