Analysis Predicts Spike in Telehealth Patients
More evidence of the growth…
Analysis predicts spike in telehealth patients
By Elise Viebeck – 02/08/13 02:23 PM ET
Efforts to curb rising healthcare costs will cause the use of telehealth technology to spike, a new analysis predicted.
IMS Research, which studies the electronics industry, forecast a nearly sixfold rise in the number of telehealth patients over the next five years. About 1.3 million U.S. patients will use communications technology to interact with doctors by 2017, the firm said.
“The cost of healthcare is a critical issue in the United States, with nearly one of every five dollars’ worth of the country’s gross domestic product going to medical expenditures,” said Theo Ahadome, an analyst who worked on the report. “Telehealth can help mitigate these costs by reducing the number of patient readmissions and cutting down on in-home care visits.”
The United States leads the world in adoption of telehealth technology, with 75 percent of the world’s remotely monitored patients living within U.S. borders.
The services tend to be useful for monitoring patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, especially those who are post-acute and recently discharged from the hospital.
Remotely monitoring vulnerable patients can cut down on readmissions without racking up expensive nursing bills, analysts said.
IMS estimated that that telehealth revenue will rise in the United States from $174.5 million last year to $707.9 million in 2017.