A new study published recently in the Journal of Health Affairs found that telehealth intervention, in place of traditional clinic-based care, results in spending reductions of 8 to 13 percent per patient, per quarter, on average.

Participants in the study were battling heart failure, COPD and diabetes, and were all issued telehealth devices to use in their homes.  Patients then recorded vital signs such as weight, blood pressure and other metrics while answering questions about their health habits while at home.  This data was uploaded to a Web-based system that analyzed the responses and alerted clinicians if the findings were outside normal parameters, according to researchers.

The idea was to compare spending in the intervention group before and after patients were offered the program, and then to compare those findings to changes observed in the control group over the same time period.  Shortly after the program became available, intervention-group spending fell while control-group spending remained relatively stable.  Looking more closely, the costs fell, depending upon the patient, to a range of $312 to $542 per quarter.  Interestingly, costs for the heart failure patient fell the most, while diabetes’ patient costs fell the least.

While studies like this reinforce the need to leverage mobile and digital technologies in healthcare to improve care and reduce costs, the study’s authors said the findings also support reform of medicare and other government regulations for telehealth.  ”The results from this project appear to suggest avenues by which Medicare could improve healthcare delivery and efficiency in the treatment of chronic disease,” the authors stated.