Impact of telemonitoring home care patients with heart failure or chronic lung disease from primary care on healthcare resource use (the TELBIL study randomised controlled trial)

Table 3 Difference in healthcare resource use between the year prior to inclusion and the follow-up period ^I

	IG	p value^II	CG	p value^II
	(n = 21)		(n = 22)
	median (IQR)		median (IQR)
All-cause hospitalisations	-2 (-3 to -1)	0.042	-1 (-3 to 0)	0.033
Cause-specific hospitalisations	-2 (-2 to -1)	0.086	-0.5 (-1 to 0)	0.244
Length of stay ^III	-0.4 (-3.8 to 1.6)	0.733	-1 (-5.5 to 5.3)	0.798
Health centre appointments ^IV	-11 (-16 to 0)	0.015	2 (-6 to 6)	0.801
Total home care visits	-1 (-2 to 12)	0.734	5 (-4 to 8)	0.152
Home visits by doctors	0 (-3 to 3)	1	0 (-2 to 2)	0.745
Home visits by nurses	2 (-2 to 4)	0.281	1 (-5 to 9)	0.384
Telephone contacts ^*	10 (6 to 24)	<0.001	3 (0 to 6)	0.147
Emergency department attendances	0 (-1 to 0)	0.210	0 (-1 to 1)	0.981
Appointments with specialists ^*	-1 (-2 to 0)	0.033	0 (0 to 1)	0.607

IG: intervention group; CG: control group; IQR: interquartile range.
^I A positive/negative difference in the means indicates an increase/decrease in use of the corresponding healthcare resource in the 12-month follow-up period compared to the 12 months before the study.
^II Wilcoxon signed-rank test assessing whether the differences between the 12-month prior to inclusion and the 12-month follow-up period were statistically significant, in each group (IG and CG).
^III Mean length of stay per admission (hospitalisation), considering only patients who were admitted at least once (12 in the IG and 19 in the CG).
^IV Appointments with doctors and/or nurses at the health centre concerning the participating patients, even if the patients themselves were not present.
^* Statistically significant differences between the two groups in terms of changes from the year prior to inclusion to the follow-up year: total health centre appointments, p = 0.035; telephone contacts, p < 0.001; and appointments with specialists, p = 0.033. No other statistically significant differences were found.

ISSN: 1472-6963