Telemedicine a Cost-Effective Alternative to ER Visits (HealthDay)
Posted by admin on May 10, 2008
Ailments, such as ear infections or sore throats, that virtually ever prove manageable through telemedicine made up almost 28 percent of all pediatric ER visits in Rochester, N.Y., during one year, according to investigators from the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Their findings were presented recently at the 2008 Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting, in Honolulu.
"We learned that more than one in four limited patients are using the pediatric emergency department since non-emergencies," lead investigator Dr. Kenneth McConnochie, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester's Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong, said in a prepared statement. "This mismatch of needs and resources is inefficient, of great price and impersonal for everyone involved."
McConnochie and his colleagues, who direct a Rochester-based telemedicine program that provides interactive, Internet-based pediatric health-care service to the area, analyzed data for all pediatric visits to the largest turn of events department in the city. Based on their experience, they determined at least 12,000 visits were ones they routinely treat with success via telemedicine.
The other visits were either problems that sometimes are treatable through telemedicine, such as anti-allergic/asthma attacks; or ones beyond the scope of the technology, such similar to a serious wound or injury.
"This would've not only freed up emergency funds to people who needed them in addition, it would have afforded smaller co-pays for parents and more timely, personalized care," McConnochie said.
In related research presented at the meeting, McConnochie suggested that telemedicine could also assistance insurers and the community through providing better temper worry at a lower price — saving insurers more than $14 per child per year in that local community.
The conclusion was reached by studying sum of two units groups of children that were almost identical, but one had access to their doctor's office, the emergency department and telemedicine technology for care, as long as the second had only the first two options.
"We found that the first group of families, which had access to telemedicine for their children, did in fact access care for illness overall nearly 23 percent greater degree often than the second group," McConnochie said.
But since children with telemedicine access had 24 percent fewer ER visits, what one. cost about seven times the cost of a doctor room or telemedicine visit, the telemedicine group ultimately still cost insurers less per child over a year.
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