Cuyahoga County in Ohio instituted a telehealth program for its 569-person Educational Service Center this past July. In the first 90 days, 45 telemedicine consultations were completed with an average savings of $342 for each visit. Median wait time to the doctor consult was 2 minutes, 23 seconds. This amounted to a 130 percent return on investment, or $48,000. This is over the summer, when many employees were on leave, and does not calculate productivity gains, e.g. less sick time. The ESC goal is 80 percent utilization. This last would boggle the Big Minds over at the RAND Corporation which criticized the 88 percent rise in utilization when CalPERS members used Teladoc. TTA 8 Mar, 25 Mar The provider of telehealth services is First Stop Health. Healthcare IT News.
BMJ reviewed 44 studies (of over 2,100 studies surveyed in the last five years) to identify factors around telehealth effectiveness and efficiency. “The factors listed most often were improved outcomes (20%), preferred modality (10%), ease of use (9%), low cost 8%), improved communication (8%) and decreased travel time (7%), which in total accounted for 61% of occurrences.” Patient satisfaction was achieved when providers delivered healthcare via videoconference or any other telehealth method. Telehealth and patient satisfaction: a systematic review and narrative analysis (PDF)
The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care hosted a Capitol Hill meeting on telehealth in primary care 9 November. The conundrum that PCPs face: telehealth is well-suited to primary care, the CPT codes are there, physician time can be easily recorded, and patients now are comfortable with it–but connectivity, health plans, and expansion of the referral network beyond the local are still not there. Regina Holliday, a well-known patient advocate who will be speaking at MedMo17, spoke about telehealth’s great advantages in mental health, especially to younger patients who want anonymous counseling and those in rural areas where it’s hundreds of miles to a mental health clinic or a psychiatrist. AAFP Forum Report
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