Observational studyBMJ open2016
Effect of telehealth on hospital utilisation and mortality in routine clinical practice: a matched control cohort study in an early adopter site.
Observational study in BMJ open, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 33 citations in OpenAlex.
- Telemedicine to Support Heart Failure Patients during Social Distancing: A Systematic Review.Global heart · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- The impact of telephone-based telemedicine on unplanned hospital visits and mortality risk during the COVID-19 pandemic: a study from a middle-income country.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Review
- Biomedical outcomes and cardiovascular risks in Chinese adults with type 2 diabetes in the metabolic management center program: A longitudinal comparative study.Journal of diabetes investigation · 2025Article
- Article
- The Use of Digital Health Services Among Patients and Citizens Living at Home: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Health literacy in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) care: a narrative review and future directions.Respiratory research · 2022Review
- Article
- Telehealth in emergency medicine: A consensus conference to map the intersection of telehealth and emergency medicine.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2021Article
- Clinical outcomes of digital sensor alerting systems in remote monitoring: a systematic review and meta-analysis.NPJ digital medicine · 2021Review
- Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology in South Africa: Clinical Training and Service in the Era of COVID-19.International journal of telerehabilitation · 2021Article
- Determining if Telehealth Can Reduce Health System Costs: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Article
- How stable is lung function in patients with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease when monitored using a telehealth system? A longitudinal and home-based study.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2020Article
- Observational
- Use of Telemedicine to Screen Patients in the Emergency Department: Matched Cohort Study Evaluating Efficiency and Patient Safety of Telemedicine.JMIR medical informatics · 2019Article
- A telehealth system for automated diagnosis of asthma and chronical obstructive pulmonary disease.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2018Article
- Extended, continuous measures of functional status in community dwelling persons with Alzheimer's and related dementia: Infrastructure, performance, tradeoffs, preliminary data, and promise.Journal of neuroscience methods · 2018Article
- Impact of At-Home Telemonitoring on Health Services Expenditure and Hospital Admissions in Patients With Chronic Conditions: Before and After Control Intervention Analysis.JMIR medical informatics · 2017Article
- Web-based cardiacOpen heartArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo assess the effects of a home-based telehealth intervention on the use of secondary healthcare and mortality.
designObservational study of a mainstream telehealth service, using person-level administrative data. Time to event analysis (Cox regression) was performed comparing telehealth patients with controls who were matched using a machine-learning algorithm.
settingA predominantly rural region of England (North Yorkshire).
participants716 telehealth patients were recruited from community, general practice and specialist acute care, between June 2010 and March 2013. Patients had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure or diabetes, and a history of associated inpatient admission. Patients were matched 1:1 to control patients, also selected from North Yorkshire, with respect to demographics, diagnoses of health conditions, previous hospital use and predictive risk score.
interventionsTelehealth involved the remote exchange of medical data between patients and healthcare professionals as part of the ongoing management of the patient's health condition. Monitoring centre staff alerted healthcare professionals if the telemonitored data exceeded preset thresholds. Control patients received usual care, without telehealth. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Time to the first emergency (unplanned) hospital admission or death. Secondary metrics included time to death and time to first admission, outpatient attendance and emergency department visit.
resultsMatched controls and telehealth patients were similar at baseline. Following enrolment, telehealth patients were more likely than matched controls to experience emergency admission or death (adjusted HR 1.34, 95% CI 1.16 to 1.56, p<0.001). They were also more likely to have outpatient attendances (adjusted HR=1.25, 1.11 to 1.40, p<0.001), but mortality rates were similar between groups. Sensitivity analyses showed that we were unlikely to have missed reductions in the likelihood of an emergency admission or death because of unobserved baseline differences between patient groups.
conclusionsTelehealth was not associated with a reduction in secondary care utilisation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.