BACKGROUND: Telemedicine has demonstrated efficacy as a supplement to traditional in-person care when treating certain diseases. Nevertheless, more investigation is needed to comprehensively assess its potential as an alternative to in-person care and its influence on access to care. The successful treatment of short stature relies on timely and regular intervention, particularly in rural and economically disadvantaged regions where the disease is more prevalent.
OBJECTIVE: This study evaluated the clinical outcomes, health-seeking behaviors, and cost of telemedicine integrated into care for children with short stature in China.
METHODS: Our study involved 1241 individuals diagnosed with short stature at the pediatric outpatient clinic of Peking University Third Hospital between 2012 and 2023. Patients were divided into in-person care (IPC; 1183 patients receiving only in-person care) and telemedicine integrated care (TIC; 58 patients receiving both in-person and virtual care) groups. For both groups, the initial 71.43% (average of 58 percentages, with each percentage representing the ratio of patients in the treatment group) of visits were categorized into the pretelemedicine phase. We used propensity score matching to select individuals with similar baseline conditions. We used 7 variables such as age, gender, and medical insurance for the 1:5 closest neighbor match. Eventually, 115 patients in the IPC group and 54 patients in the TIC group were selected. The primary clinical outcome was the change in the standard height percentage. Health-seeking behavior was described by visit intervals in the pre- and post-telemedicine phases. The cost analysis compared costs both between different groups and between different visit modalities of the TIC group in the post-telemedicine phase.
RESULTS: In terms of clinical effectiveness, we demonstrated that the increase in height among the TIC group (ΔzTIC=0.74) was more substantial than that for the IPC group (ΔzIPC=0.51, P=.01; paired t test), while no unfavorable changes in other endpoints such as BMI or insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels were observed. As for health-seeking behaviors, the results showed that, during the post-telemedicine phase, the IPC group had a visit interval of 71.08 (IQR 50.75-90.73) days, significantly longer than the prior period (51.25 [IQR 34.75-82.00] days, P<.001; U test), whereas the TIC group's visit interval remained unchanged. As for the cost per visit, there was no difference in the average cost per visit between the 2 groups nor between the pre- and post-telemedicine phases. During the post-telemedicine phase, within the TIC group, in-person visits had a higher average total cost, elevated medical and labor expenses, and greater medical cost compared with virtual visits.
CONCLUSIONS: We contend that the rise in medical visits facilitated by integrating telemedicine into care effectively restored the previously constrained number of medical visits to their usual levels, without increasing costs. Our research underscores that administering prompt treatment may enable physicians to seize a crucial treatment opportunity for children with short stature, thus attaining superior results.