A cost-minimization analysis of the societal costs of realtime teledermatology compared with conventional care: results from a randomized controlled trial in New Zealand.
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Date
2001-08-16
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Abstract
A randomized controlled trial was carried out to measure the societal costs of realtime teledermatology compared with those of conventional hospital care in New Zealand Two rural health centres were linked to a specialist hospital via ISDN at 128 kbit s Over 10 months 203 patients were referred for a specialist dermatological consultation and 26 were followed up giving a total of 229 consultations Fifty four per cent were randomized to the teledermatology consultation and 46 to the conventional hospital consultation A cost minimization analysis was used to calculate the total costs of both types of dermatological consultation The total cost of the 123 teledermatology consultations was NZ 34 346 and the total cost of the 106 conventional hospital consultations was NZ 30 081 The average societal cost of the teledermatology consultation was therefore NZ 279 23 compared with NZ 283 79 for the conventional hospital consultation The marginal cost of seeing an additional patient was NZ 135 via teledermatology and NZ 284 via conventional hospital appointment From a societal viewpoint and assuming an equal outcome teledermatology was a more cost efficient use of resources than conventional hospital care