How can telehealth reduce health costs?

Or you may just be genuinely interested in finding out about whether telehealth’s cost effectiveness is still at the same level as what it was during the pandemic, this article will answer all your questions.

At The Access Group we are passionate about giving everyone the opportunity and the freedom to do more whether you are an end user of a telehealth service or whether your local community will be providing the services. We want everyone to have access to the same information and understand how costs can vary depending on the type of telehealth service someone needs. 

In this article we will review the varying costs of telehealth services depending on an individual’s needs and whether it is truly worth it. We will explore the benefits both end-users, health and social care professionals, and local authorities can experience when investing in and continuing to use telehealth services, as well as how at Access Assure our technology enabled care platform can help individuals manage long-term conditions at home more efficiently, to improve outcomes, increase independence, and reduce pressure on the NHS.  

Telehealth cost vs in-person – what is the difference? 

 

It is no shock that the NHS has been put under extraordinary pressure, with the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbating these issues. Investing and using more telehealth services was one way during the pandemic to reduce this pressure as well as reduce the transmission rate, help manage long-term conditions at home better.  

Now post-pandemic further pressures in the current health and social care environment is also costing the NHS further and continuing to build further pressure. Bed blocking and hospital discharge delays has led to the government providing extra funding to buy more beds to help medically fit patients be discharged with the right care needed.  

Currently each NHS GP appointment costs on average £30 and the NHS also recorded that in 2020/2021, in the peak of the pandemic, the NHS spent £192 billion in primary and secondary care.  

Over 70% of healthcare organsiations have implemented telemedicine in some way. In order to roll out telehealth services IT systems and services need to be expanded and staff as well as end-users in their own homes need to know how to use the machines, software, or system.  

It can be seen that implementing telehealth services may initially be a bigger upfront cost compared to in-person health services, however in the long term these costs can become more effective, if implemented correctly.  

Similar to in-person treatments there are a variety of telehealth and telemedicine services which an individual could be exposed to. These include: 

• Virtual visits including phone and video calls  
• Patient portals and health apps  
• Patient monitoring systems  
• Community alarm systems  

In the next section of this article we will review each of these telehealth services, what they are, their cost implications, and finally the benefits of each to see how by using telehealth services in the community can help reduce hospital admissions and A and E attendance to lower the pressure and cost expenditure of the NHS, whilst improving end-users and their communities quality of life.  

Why is it important to invest in telehealth services? 

Investing in technologies including telehealth, telecare, telemedicine and telecoaching is important as it has the potential to transform the way individuals can manage and control their own health. It helps to drive for more person-centred care and ensure decisions that are made about their health are right for them and it also helps transitioning from analogue to digital telecare faster.  

In order to push the drive of this, NHS Commissioners can developed The Technology Enabled Care Services to help maximise the value of technology enabled care to patients, local authorities, and the whole health and social care system.  

Through commissioning these service NHS commissioners hope it will help raise awareness and the benefits of these technologies to improve patient outcomes whilst helping maintain the NHS without adding anymore external pressures.  

Their aim through their programme is to create an environment which helps and encourages innovative uses of technology to deliver more cost effective services.  

It is important for local authorities and health providers to invest in telehealth services to help ensure their communities are engaged in their own  healthcare and become more independent, by learning how best to cope with their conditions safely without adding more pressure on the NHS.  

How much does telehealth cost? 

Like already discussed telehealth services can be used in a variety of ways depending on the individual’s needs and on how different stakeholders fund it. Depending on what type of service a local authority or health and social care system decide to use for the needs of the individual will differ in cost.  

1. Virtual Visits  

 

Virtual visits also known as telehealth in general, gives individuals the opportunity to have an GP, nurse, or outpatient appointment in the comfort of their own homes without having to worry about travelling, paying for parking, and waiting ages in a waiting room.  

Virtual visits can be conducted just over the phone as a telephone appointment or via video call. Virtual visits rose dramatically during covid with an increase of telehealth visits increasing by 154% alone in the last week of March 2020.  

Virtual visits can both be offered privately and via the NHS. Private appointments tend to rely on the individual having a health policy and paying some form of monthly subscription and specialist appointments are often more expensive than GP appointments. In November 2022 there were 3 million missed GP appointments, and with each GP appointment roughly costing £30 in November 2022 alone missed appointments has cost the NHS £90 million.  

NHS virtual visits work in the same way as in-person except the rate of missed GP appointments tend to be less as individuals tend to have more flexibility in being able to answer anywhere and at any time. For example, in November 2022 only 15,000 GP appointments were missed when they were held as a virtual visit, costing the NHS roughly £450,000, significantly less compared to in-person visits.  

Therefore virtual visits can offer a great alternative to ensure that clinicians time is not wasted when they are already under intense pressure and have limited time. Making virtual visits more cost effective for the health and social care system and more practical for patients with busy schedules to be seen quicker.  

However, providing older adults telehealth can be more challenging so it is important to understand what barriers may be stopping older adults from using telehealth services, to make sure you are providing the support needed to help save your local community money to allow funds to be used elsewhere to improve patient outcomes further.  

2. Patient portals and health apps 

 

Patient portals and digital health apps allow you to keep track of an individual’s healthcare whether it is personal use, a loved one, or to track the progress of your patients or residents.  

Both patient portals and digital health apps gives you 24 hour access to patient medical records, provider visits, test results, and billing prescriptions to name a few.  

End-users can use both free of charge and are encouraged to use them to manage their own health more efficiently, especially if  one is living with a long-term condition.  

The cost of developing, running, and maintaining a patient portal or digital health app can vary for local authorities and the health and social care system. Often it depends on variety of factors including its interoperability, project size, number of updates needed, and the duration of development.  

In order to have a fully functioning patient portal or digital health app it can take anything from 3-6 months to develop. In order for the development to be successful there will often be a project manager, a few software designers, and quality assurance and depending on the size of the project will depend how many of each you will need.  

It is estimated therefore that the development of a patient portal or a digital health app because of these factors can cost anything from over £30,000 to roughly £60,000.  

This is clearly a high upfront cost and they will have ongoing costs to fund maintenance and updates. However the benefit of patient portals and digital health apps are that they become the bridge between healthcare providers and patients. It opens the opportunity for more person-centred care and allows patients to be more involved with managing their conditions.  

Through their data and test results being shown in one place users can learn and realise what can happen to them when their symptoms change so healthcare professionals can be contacted quicker before anything more critical takes place.  

This can reduce hospital admissions and improve quality of life, as well as saving time and costs in the long term for the health and social care systems. By patient portals and digital health apps automating data and admin automatically all information can be placed in one single platform preventing the need of an employee being paid to undertake all these manual tasks when budgets are tight, and save health providers time by helping them find the information they need quicker so they can spend more time improving patient outcomes further.  

3. Patient Monitoring Systems  

 

Patient monitoring systems are another great example of telehealth services being the bridge between patients and healthcare providers to help patients manage their own health and wellbeing more proactively.  

Patient monitoring systems can be used remotely in people’s home to monitor physiological signals such as ECG, blood pressure, and oxygen levels to name a few. Here these levels can be recorded and can send alerts to healthcare professionals so more data-driven decisions can be made to adapt care plans when needed as care needs change.  

This can help reduce the length of stay in hospitals and reduce readmissions, saving the NHS further costs. Pilots using telehealth and telecare found that they helped reduce A and E visits by 15% and emergency visits by 20%. Through allowing patients to be monitored in virtual wards before being clinically discharged, this helps reduce hospital discharge delays future unplanned or unscheduled visits to the hospital further.  

The cost of remote patient monitoring systems can vary depending on an individual’s needs. In general the more things that need to be monitored the more expensive it can be. Sometimes this has to be self-funded and other times through means-testing it is funded by local authorities.  

When funded by local authorities it might be that an individual care plan only needs a particular vital sign to be monitored for a short period of time and therefore these systems can be transported to the next individual that needs it. This prevents local authorities having to repurchase more of the same monitoring systems when budgets are already tight.  

For end-users it is best to see what you are eligible for before looking to invest in any remote patient monitoring systems. Often more lower value monitoring systems are recommended to purchase yourself like a blood pressure machine but with more technical monitoring systems you will have to check.  

Here patient monitoring systems are another great example of how telehealth services are cost effective. Despite the price of each system varying and the needs for each individual being different too, all patient monitoring systems help individuals remain more independent in their own homes to manage their conditions better.  

Ultimately, reducing hospital readmissions, shortening hospital discharge delays, and helping to save the NHS time and money, whilst putting patients at the heart of every decision that gets made.  

4. Community alarm systems  

 

Similar to patient monitoring systems, community alarm systems can vary from a very basic level to much more technical. There are a variety of alarms an individual may use in their own home from basic, community, telecare, and mobile alarms.  

Like most telehealth systems, the cost of each varies depending on their functionality. Often the more functionality an alarm system has the higher the cost. For end-users to be able to manage their health better they will need an alarm that is best suited to their needs and one that is easy to use.  

Alarm systems ultimately allow alerts to go off when someone is in need. The more complex and the higher the functionality often the more efficient they can be. For example  mobile alarms can contain GPS tracking which can help call centres locate where an individual is allowing the alarm to work outside their home. Telecare alarms can detect personal care issues including falls as well as more environmental issues in the home that could impact an individual’s health including smoke, heat, and carbon monoxide.  

Like patient monitoring systems this allows patients to be discharged to virtual wards before being clinically discharged and helps reduce readmission levels, reducing costs to the NHS further.  

The cost of community alarm systems can be as little as £10 for a basic alarm system however systems with higher functionality will cost more and often will have installation or maintenance costs too.  

So in order for it to be worth the cost local authorities and families must be aware of what the needs are and whether an alarm system and then which alarm system will be beneficial or not.  

Are benefits of telehealth worth the cost? 

Like already discussed above the variety of telehealth services and systems can be very cost effective if used correctly. Some may be more expensive initially but by allowing individuals to manage their health conditions more efficiently and proactively at home, GP attendance and unscheduled hospital visits can drop dramatically, saving the stress on loved ones, improving quality of life for patients, and reduce costings for the NHS.  

In 2020/2021 the Department of Health and Social Care recorded that the cost of each A and E visit could vary from £77 to £359 and the cost of an ambulance attending an emergency would cost £292. With the current cost of living crisis, and budgets being stretched like never before it is highly likely that these costs have also increased since then.  

In March 2022 alone there were over 2.1 million visits to A and E with both minor and major admissions. It is believed that using both telehealth and telecare services can save the NHS £1.2 billion.  

It is clear therefore that despite initial upfront costs that investing in telehealth services can have regardless whether you are a local authority, health care provider or a loved one, it is worth it. It provides more that just financial benefits, patients can receive a better quality of life and be reassured that they are being well looked after at home and that if anything changed support would be there. It also provides reassurance to loved ones who may live ages away that they their loved ones are safe and well and that they can be alerted when things changed.  

For clinicians, using telehealth services helps increase productivity by reducing admin and staff burnout, to help maintain staff morale, and save costs and time by having all the data they need collected, processed, and analysed in one place, to help deliver better joined-up person-centred care.  

Telehealth cost savings – How can Access TEC help? 

 

Here at the Access TEC we like to go one step further to provide users both a proactive and preventative model of support and care whilst having the safety net of a reactive alarm system.  

Our Access Assure service helps you integrate data from a variety of places onto one singular platform which both clinicians and end-users can use alike to manage their health better.  

Using machine learning personalised smart alerts can be created to unobtrusively monitor behaviour in the home to trigger support when it is needed.

Here our home hub and app has the capability to make it even easier for families of a loved one to be reassured and boost confidence by reducing the frequency of hospital admissions and emergency visits to not only improve quality of life for the individual, the family, but the community too.  

Waiting times in hospital discharge, A and E, and GP waiting rooms can be reduced as individuals can learn and understand more about their conditions and what triggers to look out for. This, in turn, allows people to recover in the most ideal place for them after a hospital admission, their home, if it’s deemed safe to do so. 

Our latest integration enables better proactive care further by allowing care workers enhanced access to smart alerts and alarms from the Assure Home Hub within our care planning mobile app. Here alerts can be sent out directly to care workers to be informed of better activity information between visits to decide the next best call to action. Risks are mitigated and issues now can be identified before something more critical takes place.

Here are technology-enabled care offers a variety of functionality and types of hubs and wearables to best suit yours and your local community’s needs not just now but as they change too.  

Summarising telehealth cost effectiveness 

In this article we have addressed the key differences between telehealth and in-person health services, we have acknowledged the importance of investing in telehealth services for you and your community.  

We have explained how NHS commissioners are providing resources so local authorities and health care providers can get the support and guidance they need to commission and implement telehealth correctly to maximise benefits and improve the quality of life of patients.  

Whilst comparing the differences between in-person and telehealth services we have also compared some of the most popular types of telehealth services and the cost implications of each and whether it is worth it.  

From the analysis of telehealth services in this article it is clear it provides many benefits and despite initial high upfront costs, the benefits financially, socially, and environmentally are more than worth it.  

Here at The Access Group we wanted this article to give you all the answers surrounding the cost effectiveness of telehealth and help explain how our Assure service combines both functionality of patient monitoring and alarms systems on a single platform.  

Here our Assure service can integrate all different data readings in one place to help individuals manage their health better, be more independent, help clinicians make better data intelligent decisions, whilst providing loved ones reassurance that their loved ones are well and safe through our app so they can be updated whenever and wherever. 

For more information in how our digital telecare and technology enabled care can help the health management of your loved one or community improve today get you provider to contact us, and we can discuss how our proactive prevention based on intelligence data helps improve quality of life, patient outcomes, whilst reducing costs for health and social care providers to create a safer and more streamlined approach to deliver better person-centred care.  

Let’s work together to combine data to simplify home life so people can live happier, healthier, and safer lives at a fraction of the cost.