A study, published in CHEST, examined the effects of a Veterans Affairs' intensive care unit telemedicine program on interhospital transfers.
Researchers studied data from 553,523 admissions to 306 Veterans Affairs ICUs between 2011 and 2015. Of the total number of admitted patients, 97,256 were admitted to ICUs with telemedicine services and 456,267 to ICUs without the services.
The study shows in the ICUs with telemedicine interhospital transfers decreased from 3.46 percent in the pre-telemedicine implementation period to 1.99 percent in the post-telemedicine implementation period. Transfers decreased from 2.03 percent to 1.68 percent in the ICUs without telemedicine.
Additionally, ICU telemedicine was associated with overall reduced transfers with a relative risk of 0.79. And, researchers found, ICU telemedicine was not associated with an increase in 30-day mortality.