| Course | NU 715 Telehealth to Expand Health Care Access and Delivery |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 3 |
| Paper type | Telehealth suitability criteria |
| Length | About 520 words, 4 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | MSN |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NU 715 Unit 3
Encounter Suitability Criteria for a Rural Heart Failure Telehealth Service: Accepted, Accepted With Conditions, and Declined
Student Name
Department of Nursing, Herzing University
NU 715: Telehealth to Expand Health Care Access and Delivery
Instructor Name
February 4, 2026
Encounter Suitability Criteria for a Rural Heart Failure Telehealth Service: Accepted, Accepted With Conditions, and Declined
Service, Population, and Modality
Service: the remote heart failure program of a composite rural Kansas health system, providing video follow-up visits and 30 days of home monitoring of weight, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation after hospital discharge. Population: adults with heart failure discharged from the system's hospital or a partner hospital. Modalities: live video to home, live video to an outlying clinic with a nurse present, telephone, and remote monitoring. These criteria are decided once by the service's clinical leads, rather than case by case by whichever clinician takes the call, so that the same presentation gets the same answer on a busy afternoon as on a quiet morning. Telehealth works best when a service decides in advance which problems suit it and builds in ways to escalate (Hollander & Carr, 2020).
Accepted Remotely
These are handled by video to home, or by telephone if video is not possible, without further conditions.
| Presentation or task | Why it is suitable |
|---|---|
| Scheduled post-discharge follow-up in a patient reporting feeling the same or better, with stable monitoring data | The main tasks, medication reconciliation, symptom review, weight and blood pressure trends, and teaching, do not require touch |
| Medication questions and adjustments based on stable monitoring trends, such as a planned increase in a guideline-directed medication | Decisions rest on readings, symptoms, and laboratory results available remotely |
| Review of recent laboratory results | No examination needed |
| Teaching and self-care coaching | Often better at home, with the patient's own scale, food, and medications visible |
| Caregiver questions and planning | Distance lets working caregivers join |
Accepted With Conditions
These may be handled remotely only if a stated condition is met; otherwise they convert to in-person care.
| Presentation | Condition that must be met | If not met |
|---|---|---|
| Weight gain of 1 to 2 kilograms over two days without breathlessness at rest | Video visit the same day with a caregiver present to examine ankles and check orthostatic pressure; oxygen saturation 92% or higher | Same-day clinic visit |
| Increased ankle swelling | Photo or video of edema, and weight available | Clinic visit within 24 hours |
| Mild increase in breathlessness with exertion only | Video with counting test at or near the patient's usual; no orthopnea change | Same-day clinic visit |
| Dizziness on standing after a diuretic increase | Orthostatic readings obtained with a caregiver present; able to eat and drink | Clinic visit and laboratory tests the same day |
| First post-discharge visit for a patient living alone with limited mobility | Video from an outlying clinic with a nurse present, rather than to home | Home health nursing visit |
| Any visit where the patient cannot use video | Telephone visit plus an in-person vital sign check within 48 hours | In-person visit |
Declined for Remote Care
These presentations are never managed remotely; the clinician's job is to direct the patient to the right in-person setting, arranging emergency transport when needed.
Chest pain, fainting, or new palpitations with dizziness. Breathlessness at rest, inability to lie flat that is new or worse, or oxygen saturation below 90%. New confusion or a caregiver's report that the patient is not acting like themselves. Systolic blood pressure below 90 with symptoms. Weight gain of more than 2 kilograms since discharge with any new symptom. Any presentation where the patient or caregiver says they are frightened and want to be seen. The last criterion is included deliberately: a patient's own sense that something is wrong is a clinical finding, and remote care should not argue with it.
How the Thresholds Were Set
The warning signs follow the symptoms and signs of worsening heart failure described in current guidance (Heidenreich et al., 2022), adapted by the service's cardiologist and nurse practitioners for what can be observed on video. The conditional category depends on the patient-assisted examination components described in the service's remote examination protocol, drawing on published guidance for virtual examination (Benziger et al., 2021). Thresholds are deliberately conservative in the first year of the service.
Review
Every conversion from remote to in-person care, and every emergency visit or readmission within 48 hours of a remote encounter, is reviewed monthly by the clinical leads. If patients managed remotely under the conditional criteria are being admitted soon afterward, the conditions are tightened; if conversions are frequent but rarely find anything, they may be relaxed. The criteria are a service decision, revised on evidence from the service's own patients. Any clinician may move a patient to a more cautious category on judgment alone, without justification; moving a patient to a less cautious category than the criteria allow requires a documented reason and discussion with a clinical lead. That asymmetry keeps individual judgment available where it adds safety.
References
Benziger, C. P., Huffman, M. D., Sweis, R. N., & Stone, N. J. (2021). The telehealth ten: A guide for a patient-assisted virtual physical examination. The American Journal of Medicine, 134(1), 48-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.06.015
Heidenreich, P. A., Bozkurt, B., Aguilar, D., Allen, L. A., Byun, J. J., Colvin, M. M., Deswal, A., Drazner, M. H., Dunlay, S. M., Evers, L. R., Fang, J. C., Fedson, S. E., Fonarow, G. C., Hayek, S. S., Hernandez, A. F., Khazanie, P., Kittleson, M. M., Lee, C. S., Link, M. S., ... Yancy, C. W. (2022). 2022 AHA/ACC/HFSA guideline for the management of heart failure: A report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Joint Committee on Clinical Practice Guidelines. Circulation, 145(18), e895-e1032. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001063
Hollander, J. E., & Carr, B. G. (2020). Virtually perfect? Telemedicine for Covid-19. New England Journal of Medicine, 382(18), 1679-1681. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2003539
The Herzing NU 715 Unit 3 instructions
Unit 3 asks you to develop criteria for which patient encounters are suitable for telehealth in a defined service. Expect to describe the service and population, sort presentations into categories such as suitable, conditionally suitable and unsuitable, state the conditions or thresholds, explain how criteria were set and plan how they will be reviewed. Many versions ask whether criteria should differ by modality. Check whether your section wants a table. Thresholds should come from clinical guidelines rather than intuition. Criteria are internal policy, not law, so say how they relate to licensure and standard of care. A review process that looks at conversions and short-interval emergency visits shows the criteria are tested rather than set once and forgotten.
How this NU 715 Unit 3 example is built
The criteria open with service, population and modality, which define what remote care means here. Three sections follow, one per category. Accepted presentations are listed without conditions. Conditional presentations each state the condition, such as a caregiver present to check swelling, and what happens if it is not met. Declined presentations are listed with the clinician's action, so the criteria guide behavior even when care is not remote. The threshold section explains that warning signs follow the heart failure guideline, adapted for what can be observed by video or measured at home. The review section names what is reviewed, by whom and how often. Each category is short, so the document can be used at a workstation during a visit.
NU 715 Unit 3 rubric: what full points look like
In the Herzing rubric for suitability criteria, points usually go to the service definition, the categories and criteria, the clinical basis, safety provisions, review and writing. Category points reward clear, mutually exclusive groups. The criteria row is often the heaviest and gives full credit for specific presentations with thresholds. Clinical basis points require guideline citations for thresholds. Safety provisions are scored on conversion pathways and emergency arrangements. Review earns marks for a defined process with triggers. A short explanation of how criteria were derived can earn credit within the clinical basis row. APA 7 references should include Hollander and Carr on virtual care and the 2022 heart failure guideline.
NU 715 Unit 3 help: mistakes that cost points
Unit 3 criteria usually lose points when categories overlap, so a presentation could fit in two places. Another frequent problem is thresholds without a source. Students often list declined presentations without saying what the clinician does next. Conditional criteria are sometimes stated without the condition. Review processes are missing or vague. Some criteria try to cover every condition the service might see, losing focus. Others ignore that a presentation suitable for video may not be suitable for telephone. Finally, keep the document usable, because criteria meant for use during a visit need to be scanned quickly, and long paragraphs make that hard for both the clinician and the grader.
Get a NU 715 Unit 3 example written to your instructions
Send the Unit 3 instructions and the rubric from your NU 715 classroom, plus the service and population your criteria have to cover. We write a custom example with the principles stated first, presentations sorted into three lists, conditions written as checkable facts and an escalation route attached, returned in 24 to 48 hours. The first custom sample is free.
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NU 715 Unit 3 questions, answered
How many presentations should the criteria cover?
Enough to show the reasoning across the range, which usually means a dozen or so rather than an exhaustive index. Include a few obvious acceptances, several that work only with conditions, and two or three declines, since a set that refuses nothing has not made a decision. Where the instructions name particular presentations, use those and attach the conditions each one carries.
Do these criteria have legal force?
They are an internal standard rather than a rule anyone outside the organization must accept, and they sit underneath whatever your board of nursing, licensure terms and organizational policy require. Write them to be consistent with those, say which authority each condition follows from where you can, and confirm current requirements with the issuing body instead of relying on a secondary summary.
Should the criteria differ by modality?
They usually have to. A presentation that is reasonable over video with a caregiver present may be unsafe by telephone alone, and an asynchronous pathway carries different timing risks altogether. Either write the set for one modality and say so, or carry a column for each, but do not leave a reader assuming that a rule made for video governs an audio-only call.
Where can I find a free NU 715 Unit 3 sample paper?
This page shows the full NU 715 Unit 3 heart failure suitability criteria free of charge, all three categories and the review process. A custom set of criteria can be built for your own telehealth service and population.
How do I decide if a patient visit is suitable for telehealth?
Sort presentations by risk and by what can be assessed remotely, using guideline thresholds. This sample keeps stable checks remote, allows some weight gains remotely only with conditions, and sends chest pain or fainting to in-person care every time.