19
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Telehealth for Limiting Readmission Rates of COPD Patients: An Assessment Based on Medicare Data

      research-article
      , BA, Biosciences 1 , , MS 2 , , MS 2 , , MS 2 , , PhD 3 ,
      Telehealth and Medicine Today
      Partners in Digital Health
      COPD, Data Analytics, Medicare, Readmission, Telemedicine

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisher
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Objective

          Telemedicine has developed as an innovative way to remotely view and treat patients without necessitating for patients to physically come into a physicians’ office or healthcare facility. This study aims to provide insights into the effectiveness of integrating telemedicine in medical facilities, where patients have high hierarchical condition category (HCC) risk scores.

          Design

          This study utilized two raw datasets: (1) a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) dataset created from the 2017 Medicare Physician and Other Supplier National Provider Identity Aggregate Report and (2) a National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) dataset created from the NCES table on the number and percentage of households in each state with computer and internet access. A regression analysis was carried out on the CMS dataset to determine the correlation between HCC risk scores and the reimbursement lost by healthcare facilities, where over 50% of their patients are diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A second analysis was conducted with the NCES dataset to show which states had a high proportion of both households with internet access and COPD patients. A final regression analysis was run and translated into an interactive map in order to determine which regions of the United States could most benefit from telemedicine adoption.

          Results

          This study discovered a number of physicians and healthcare facilities in the eastern region of the United States that could benefit significantly from telemedicine applications. These findings were supported by the locations and data abstracted from facilities with high numbers of COPD patients, which were found to have poor HCC risk scores and thus high reimbursement losses.

          Conclusions

          This study confirmed the association between HCC risk scores and reimbursement losses. In order to alleviate those losses, this study identified states across the United States that should choose to incorporate telemedicine into how they diagnose and treat patients based on the needs of healthcare facilities and the internet capabilities of households in those states, because telemedicine integration presents the potential to improve patient HCC risk scores and reimbursement amounts by lowering readmission rates while also promoting higher patient and physician satisfaction. Future efforts should develop specific strategies to assist with telemedicine implementation and should track the observed effects of its adoption on reimbursements and quality of care.

          Related collections

          Most cited references21

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: found
          Is Open Access

          Evaluating barriers to adopting telemedicine worldwide: A systematic review

          Introduction and objective Studies on telemedicine have shown success in reducing the geographical and time obstacles incurred in the receipt of care in traditional modalities with the same or greater effectiveness; however, there are several barriers that need to be addressed in order for telemedicine technology to spread. The aim of this review is to evaluate barriers to adopting telemedicine worldwide through the analysis of published work. Methods The authors conducted a systematic literature review by extracting the data from the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and PubMed (MEDLINE) research databases. The reviewers in this study analysed 30 articles (nine from CINAHL and 21 from Medline) and identified barriers found in the literature. This review followed the checklist from Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2009. The reviewers organized the results into one table and five figures that depict the data in different ways, organized by: barrier, country-specific barriers, organization-specific barriers, patient-specific barriers, and medical-staff and programmer-specific barriers. Results The reviewers identified 33 barriers with a frequency of 100 occurrences through the 30 articles. The study identified the issues with technically challenged staff (11%), followed by resistance to change (8%), cost (8%), reimbursement (5%), age of patient (5%), and level of education of patient (5%). All other barriers occurred at or less than 4% of the time. Discussion and conclusions Telemedicine is not yet ubiquitous, and barriers vary widely. The top barriers are technology-specific and could be overcome through training, change-management techniques, and alternating delivery by telemedicine and personal patient-to-provider interaction. The results of this study identify several barriers that could be eliminated by focused policy. Future work should evaluate policy to identify which one to lever to maximize the results.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: found
            Is Open Access

            Patient Satisfaction

            Patient satisfaction is an important and commonly used indicator for measuring the quality in health care. Patient satisfaction affects clinical outcomes, patient retention, and medical malpractice claims. It affects the timely, efficient, and patient-centered delivery of quality health care. Patient satisfaction is thus a proxy but a very effective indicator to measure the success of doctors and hospitals. This article discusses as to how to ensure patient satisfaction in dermatological practice.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Comparison of Comorbidity Scores in Predicting Surgical Outcomes

              Introduction The optimal methodology for assessing comorbidity to predict various surgical outcomes such as mortality, readmissions, complications and failure to rescue (FTR) using claims data has not been established. Objective Compare diagnosis- and prescription-based comorbidity scores for predicting surgical outcomes. Methods We used 100% Texas Medicare data (2006–2011) and included patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), pulmonary lobectomy, endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm, open repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm, colectomy, and hip replacement (N=39,616). The ability of diagnosis-based (Charlson comorbidity score, Elixhauser comorbidity score, Combined Comorbidity Score, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services-Hierarchical Condition Categories [CMS-HCC]) vs. prescription-based chronic disease (CDS) score in predicting 30-day mortality, 1-year mortality, 30-day readmission, complications, and FTR were compared using c-statistics (c) and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI). Results The overall 30-day mortality was 5.8%, 1-year mortality was 17.7%, 30-day readmission was 14.1%, complication rate was 39.7%, and FTR was 14.5%. CMS-HCC performed the best in predicting surgical outcomes (30-day mortality, c=0.791, IDI=4.59%; 1-year mortality, c=0.798, IDI=9.60%; 30-day readmission, c=0.630, IDI=1.27%; complications, c=0.766, IDI=9.37%; FTR, c=0.811, IDI=5.24%) followed by Elixhauser comorbidity index/disease categories (30-day mortality, c=0.750, IDI=2.37%; 1-year mortality, c=0.755, IDI=5.82%; 30-day readmission, c=0.629, IDI=1.43%; complications, c=0.730, IDI=3.99%; FTR, c=0.749, IDI=2.17%). Addition of prescription-based scores to diagnosis-based scores did not improve performance. Conclusions The CMS-HCC had superior performance in predicting surgical outcomes. Prescription-based scores, alone or in addition to diagnosis-based scores, were not better than any diagnosis-based scoring system.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                TMT
                Telehealth and Medicine Today
                Partners in Digital Health
                2471-6960
                05 February 2021
                2021
                : 6
                : 10.30953/tmt.v6.213
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Kinesiology, and Medical Humanities Minor, Rice University (Houston, TX, USA)
                [2 ]Healthcare Management and Informatics, Kennesaw State University (Kennesaw, GA, USA)
                [3 ]Professor and Executive Director, Healthcare Management and Informatics, Kennesaw State University (Kennesaw, GA, USA)
                Author notes
                Corresponding Author: Sweta Sneha, ssneha@ 123456kennesaw.edu
                Article
                213
                10.30953/tmt.v6.213
                45d8ab0c-c178-44e4-8456-acc729cbd38a
                © 2021 Sweta Sneha

                This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, adapt, enhance this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial.

                History
                Categories
                Original Clinical Research

                Social & Information networks,General medicine,General life sciences,Health & Social care,Public health,Hardware architecture
                Telemedicine,Data Analytics,Readmission,COPD,Medicare

                Comments

                Comment on this article