Article

In this study, we assessed the longitudinal effect of a Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA) patient-centered Care Coordination Home Telehealth (CCHT) program on
preventable hospitalization use by veterans with diabetes mellitus (DM) at four
VA medical centers. We used a matched treatment-control design (n = 387 for both
groups). All patients were followed for 4 years. We operationalized ambulatory
care-sensitive conditions (ACSCs) by applying Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality criteria to VA inpatient databases to determine preventable
hospitalization use. We used a generalized linear mixed model to estimate the
adjusted effect of the CCHT program on preventable hospitalization use over time.
During the initial 18 months of follow-up, CCHT enrollees were less likely to be
admitted for a preventable hospitalization than their nonenrollee counterparts,
and this difference diminished during the rest of the 4-year follow-up period.
The VA CCHT program for DM patients reduced preventable hospitalizations. These
findings are some of the first that have systematically examined the extent to
which home telehealth programs have a long-term effect on preventable
hospitalization use.

Langue : ANGLAIS