Hospital Readmission Rates for Patients Receiving In-Person vs. Telemedicine Discharge Follow-Up Care

Abstract

Introduction: Unplanned readmissions can be avoided by standardizing and improving the coordination of care after discharge. Telemedicine has been increasingly utilized; however, the quality of this care has not been well studied. Standardized measures can provide an objective comparison of care quality. The purpose of our study was to compare quality performance transitions of care management in the office vs telemedicine.

Methods: The Epic SlicerDicer tool was used to compare the percentage of encounters that were completed via telemedicine (video visits); or via in-person for comparison, Chi-squared tests were used.

Results: A total of 13,891 patients met the inclusion criteria during the study time frame. There were 12,846 patients in the office and 1,048 in the telemedicine cohort. The office readmission rate was 11.9% with 1,533 patients out of 12,846 compared with telemedicine with the rate of readmission at 12.1% with 126 patients out of 1,045 patients. The P-value for the Chi-squared test between the prepandemic and study time frame was 0.15 and 0.95, respectively. Demographic comparability was seen.

Discussion: Our study found a comparable readmission rate between patients seen via in-office and telemedicine for Transitions of Care Management (TCM) encounters. The findings of this study support the growing body of evidence that telemedicine augments quality performance while reducing cost and improving access without negatively impacting HEDIS performance in health care systems.

Conclusion: Telemedicine poses little threat of negatively impacting HEDIS performance and might be as effective as posthospitalization traditional office care transitions of care management.

Keywords: Chi-Square Test; Continuity of Care; Health Policy; Hospital Medicine; Patient Discharge; Patient Readmission; Primary Health Care; Telemedicine; Transition of Care.