A Cost-Minimization Analysis of a Medical Record-based, Store and Forward and Provider-to-provider Telemedicine Compared to Usual Care in Catalonia: More Agile and Efficient, Especially for Users

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Abstract

Background: Telemedicine (interconsultation between primary and hospital care teams) has been operating in the counties of Central Catalonia Bages, Moianès and Berguedà since 2011, specializing in teledermatology, teleulcers, teleophthalmology and teleaudiometries. For the period until the end of 2019, a total of 52,198 visits were recorded. Objective: To analyze the differential costs between telemedicine and usual care in a semi-urban environment. Methodology: A cost-minimization evaluation, including direct and indirect costs from a societal perspective, distinguishing healthcare and user’s costs, was carried out over a three-month period. Results: Telemedicine saved € 780,397 over the period analyzed. A differential cost favorable to telemedicine of about € 15 per visit was observed, with the patient being the largest beneficiary of this saving (by 85%) in terms of shorter waiting times and travel costs. From the healthcare system perspective, moving the time spent in a hospital care consultation to primary care is efficient in terms of the total time devoted per patient. In social terms and in this context, telemedicine is more efficient than usual care. Conclusion: Allowing users to save time in terms of consultation and travel is the main driver of interconsultation between primary and hospital care savings in a semi-urban context. The telemedicine service is also economically favorable for the healthcare system, enabling it to provide a more agile service, which also benefits healthcare professionals.

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The taxonomy of telemedicine.

Rashid Bashshur, Gary Shannon, Elizabeth Krupinski … (2024)

The purpose of this article is to present a taxonomy for telemedicine. The field has markedly grown, with an increasing number of applications, a variety of technologies, and newly introduced terminology. A taxonomy would serve to bring conceptual clarity to this burgeoning set of alternatives to in-person healthcare delivery. The article starts with a brief discussion of the importance of taxonomy as an information management strategy to improve knowledge sharing, facilitate research and policy initiatives, and provide some guidance for the orderly development of telemedicine. We provide a conceptual context for the proliferation of related concepts, such as telehealth, e-health, and m-health, as well as a classification of the content of these concepts. Our main concern is to develop an explicit taxonomy of telemedicine and to demonstrate how it can be used to provide definitive information about the true effects of telemedicine in terms of cost, quality, and access. Taxonomy development and refinement is an iterative process. If this initial attempt at classification proves useful, subject matter experts could enhance the development and proliferation of telemedicine by testing, revising, and verifying this taxonomy.

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The effectiveness of telemedicine in the management of chronic heart disease – a systematic review

Clemens S Kruse, Mounica Soma, Deepthi Pulluri … (2017)

Objective The primary objective of this systematic review is to assess the effectiveness of telemedicine in managing chronic heart disease patients concerning improvement in varied health attributes. Design This review follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) standard. Setting We adopted a logical search process used in two main research databases, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature and PubMed (MEDLINE). Four reviewers meticulously screened 151 abstracts to determine relevancy and significance to our research objectives. The final sample in the literature review consisted of 20 articles. Main outcome measures We looked for improved medical outcomes as the main outcome measure. Results Our results indicated that telemedicine is highly associated with the reduction in hospitalisations and readmissions (9 of 20 articles, 45%). The other significant attributes most commonly encountered were improved mortality and cost-effectiveness (both 40%) and improved health outcomes (35%). Patient satisfaction occurred the least in the literature, mentioned in only 2 of 20 articles (10%). There was no significant mention of an increase in patient satisfaction because of telemedicine. Conclusions We concluded that telemedicine is considered to be effective in quality measures such as readmissions, moderately effective in health outcomes, only marginally effective in customer satisfaction. Telemedicine shows promise on an alternative modality of care for cardiovascular disease, but additional exploration should continue to quantify the quality measures.

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Telemedicine: A systematic review of economic evaluations

Bahram Delgoshaei, Mohammadreza Mobinizadeh, Reyhaneh Mojdekar … (2017)

Background: Telemedicine is an expanded term in health information technology that comprises procedures for transmitting medical information electronically to improve patients’ health status. The objective of this research is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of telemedicine interventions in various specialty areas. Methods: The Cochrane Library and Centre for Review and Dissemination were searched up to February 2013 using Mesh. Studies that compared any kind of telemedicine with any other routine care technique and used cost per health utility unit’s outcomes were included. Results: Twenty-one articles were included. According to the included studies, it seems that using telemedicine in cardiology can be effective and cost-effective enough but pre-hospital telemedicine diagnostics program are likely to have little impact on acute myocardial infarction fatality. In pulmonary, telemedicine can be a cost-effective strategy for delivering outpatient pulmonary care to rural populations which have limited access to specialized services, but telemedicine is not cost- effective in asthma and airways cancer. In ophthalmology, especially in the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy, the use of telemedicine is a cost-effective tool. In dermatology, telemedicine is not cost-effective enough in comparison of conventional cares. In other fields such as physical activity and diet, eating disorder, tele-ICU, psychotherapy for depression and telemedicine on ships, telemedicine can be used as a cost-effective tool for treatments or cares. Conclusion: Most of the included studies confirmed that telemedicine is cost-effective for applying in major medical fields such as cardiology; but in dermatology, papers could not confirm the positive capability of telemedicine.