Increased access to healthcare and improvements in patient satisfaction are the leading quality improvements that telehealth programs can bring to healthcare organizations, according to the 2018 Healthcare Benchmarks: Telehealth & Remote Patient Monitoring. The survey of healthcare executives, conducted by the Healthcare Intelligence Network (HIN) also examined the impact that telehealth has on five additional healthcare quality measures: Medication adherence, health complications, patient compliance, medical errors and diagnosis accuracy.

Additional metrics and benchmarks on telehealth and remote patient monitoring can be found the HIN report, which can be ordered here.

In the field of vision care, portable screening tools and access to tele-ophthalmology play a vital role in early diagnosis and treatment of ocular conditions such as glaucoma and, especially, diabetic retinopathy, for people in rural areas, according to research published last year in The British Journal of Ophthalmology. The results show that tele-ophthalmology is a cost-saving approach to treatment, especially in the case of patients with diabetic retinopathy, a disease that can affect more than 25 percent of rural diabetes patients in the U.S., according to a 2010 study. In contrast, only 22 percent of rural diabetes patients in that research developed diabetic retinopathy.

“The most important determinant of cost-effectiveness of tele-ophthalmology was the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy among patients screened, indicating an increase of cost savings with the increase of screening rates,” the report said. It also noted that teleophthalmology for glaucoma was more cost-effective compared with an in-person examination.