THE CARE SPAN Use Of Telemedicine Can Reduce Hospitalizations Of Nursing Home Residents And Generate Savings For Medicare
THE CARE SPAN Use Of Telemedicine Can Reduce Hospitalizations Of Nursing Home Residents And Generate Savings For Medicare
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DOI：
10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0922
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发表时间：
2014-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
9.7
通讯作者：
O'Malley, A. James
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Grabowski, David C.;O'Malley, A. James
疗养院居民的住院治疗是频繁的，并导致并发症，发病率和医疗保险支出超过十亿美元，每年。许多疗养院在非工作时间没有医生在场可能会导致不适当的住院治疗。我们对11家养老院进行的对照研究的结果首次表明，在下班时间从随叫随到的远程医疗医生覆盖范围可以减少住院，从而为医疗保险节省超过设施投资的成本。但与其他研究机构相比，这些节省仅在更大程度上使用远程医疗服务的研究疗养院中才明显。远程医疗服务提供者和养老院领导人可能需要采取额外措施，鼓励在提供此类服务的设施中使用远程医疗。与此同时，承担远程医疗费用的利益攸关方与可能因使用远程医疗而节省费用的利益攸关方之间的更密切合作，可进一步激励采用远程医疗。
Hospitalizations of nursing home residents are frequent and result in complications, morbidity, and Medicare expenditures of more than a billion dollars annually. The lack of a physician presence at many nursing homes during off hours might contribute to inappropriate hospitalizations. Findings from our controlled study of eleven nursing homes provide the first indications that switching from on-call to telemedicine physician coverage during off hours could reduce hospitalizations and therefore generate cost savings to Medicare in excess of the facility's investment in the service. But those savings were evident only at the study nursing homes that used the telemedicine service to a greater extent, compared to the other study facilities. Telemedicine service providers and nursing home leaders might need to take additional steps to encourage buy-in to the use of telemedicine at facilities with such services. At the same time, closer alignment of the stakeholders that bear the costs of telemedicine and those that might realize savings because of its use could offer further incentives for the adoption of telemedicine.