Telemedicine Keeps Seniors Out Of ER

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Study reveals after-hours telemedicine significantly reduced hospitalization rates of those in nursing homes

According to a recent study published in Health Affairs, Use Of Telemedicine Can Reduce Hospitalizations Of Nursing Home Residents And Generate Savings For Medicare, “Hospitalizations of nursing home residents are frequent and result in complications, morbidity, and Medicare expenditures of more than a billion dollars annually.”

Now, relief may be only a computer monitor away according to the study’s authors who write “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.”

According to iHealth Beat, the study found that hospitalizations declined 9.7 percent among facilities that adopted telemedicine services, compared with a decline of 5.3 percent at the facilities that did not adopt telemedicine. Researchers estimated that Medicare could save about $151,000 annually per nursing home if all facilities adopted telemedicine services. Implementing the telemedicine services would cost only about $30,000 per facility.

“Future research will be needed to test models that encourage greater engagement on the part of providers, as well as to examine the implications of savings for health outcomes,” wrote researchers, according to Clinical Innovation. “If the results of such studies are promising, policy makers could consider reforms that would better align the costs of telemedicine with the potential savings from reduced hospitalizations.”