Veterans Health Administration has finally decided to audit its 12-year-old Home Telehealth Program that didn’t reach its potential and left it with question why great opportunity to enroll more veterans is missed. According to the audit (PDF link), about 205,000 veterans who met non-institutional care (NIC) criteria were eligible to participate in the telehealth program in FY2013, and about 29% of them (or 59,000 veterans) could have avoided long-term institutional care by using the program.

The audit faults a change in performance methodology adopted by the VHA in 2011, when the agency switched from measuring specific performance goals for each of the three categories to looking at the program by total number of patients enrolled in all categories. As a result, auditors found that the VHA’s performance metrics in successive years featured more HPDP participants, who generally have less healthcare needs and don’t need as much management from primary care physicians as the NIC patients.

NIC patients showed the best outcomes after being enrolled in the telehealth program, reducing their average bed days of care (BDOC) by 1.4 days over a six-month period; that’s compared to 0.3 days and 0.4 days for chronic care management (CCM) and HDPD patients, respectively.

Conclusion of the audit is that the telehealth program has improved clinical outcomes and expanded access to care for veterans while reducing treatment costs and complications. The program costs less than $2,400 per patient annually, compared to a $22,200 annual price tag for care management and in-home nursing care and a $92,300 annual bill for contract nursing home care.

[Via: mHealthNews]