This appeared last week:
7 September, 2016
Posted by Felicity Nelson
The first national trial of home monitoring for chronically ill patients has demonstrated the savings that could emerge from a large-scale rollout
During the 12-month trial, undertaken by the CSIRO, telemonitoring almost halved MBS spending and reduced PBS costs by one-quarter.
Hospital admissions were reduced by 53.2%, while the average length of stay in hospital dropped by 75.7%.
Based on the study, CSIRO estimates a potential $3 billion annual saving to the healthcare budget by providing telehealth services to the 500,000 Australian aged over 65 who would be good candidates for such a program.
“This is the first time we’ve done this in the Australian setting – a multi-site, multi-state study looking at the longitudinal difference for people with chronic illness,” lead researcher Dr Rajiv Jayasena told The Medical Republic.
“We have shown… there are economies of scale [with implementing telemonitoring], given that 70% of our healthcare spend is towards managing chronic diseases.”
During the trial, patients with chronic illnesses measured clinically relevant vital signs every two days using a monitoring unit in their own home.
Patients suffered from chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and asthma, and self-monitored parameters such as temperature, spirometry, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, glucose levels, and also performed ECGs.
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I have to say I like the integrated device the CSIRO have developed for this trial. It should be able to be replicated very economically on any sensible scale.
Well done to all those involved.
David.
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