How does Telemedicine Affect the Last-Mile Delivery of Emergency Care? Evidence from Stroke Patients

48 Pages Posted: 2 Jun 2023

See all articles by Yao Li

Yao Li

Southern University of Science and Technology

Jian Chen

Tsinghua University - School of Economics and Management

Wenwen Li

Fudan University - School of Management

Date Written: June 1, 2023

Abstract

In healthcare, deficiencies in the hospital’s treatment capabilities always result in a mismatch between demand and services in the last-mile delivery of emergency care. Telemedicine , an approach to enabling offsite physicians to provide services virtually and quickly, shows great potentials for improving last-mile health care delivery. Using a large-scale stroke patient dataset in Florida from 2010 to 2016, this study empirically examines the impact of telemedicine on hospital treatment capability as well as health outcomes in last-mile care delivery. Based on the difference-in-differences (DID) framework, our findings show that telemedicine improves treatment capability in terms of operational efficiency, but no significant effect is found in the capability of care specialties. Regarding health outcomes, telemedicine decreases the in-hospital mortality rate and the hemiplegia rate. In addition, our study shows that stroke patients treated in hospitals with telemedicine have lower probability of discharge to nursing homes, which implies that the positive externality of telemedicine. Furthermore, our heterogeneous effect analysis indicates that telemedicine helps to address the disparity in resource allocation between urban and rural areas, by increasing capability of care specialties and reducing transfers for non-urban patients.

Note:
Funding Information: This project was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72201068].

Conflict of Interests: The authors declared no competing interest.

Keywords: telemedicine, stroke patients, treatment capability, operational efficiency, health outcome, discharge disposition, resource allocation disparity

Suggested Citation

Li, Yao and Chen, Jian and Li, Wenwen, How does Telemedicine Affect the Last-Mile Delivery of Emergency Care? Evidence from Stroke Patients (June 1, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4465738 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4465738

Yao Li (Contact Author)

Southern University of Science and Technology ( email )

1088 Xueyuan Avenue
Nanshan District
Shenzhen, Guangdong
China

Jian Chen

Tsinghua University - School of Economics and Management ( email )

Beijing, 100084
China

Wenwen Li

Fudan University - School of Management ( email )

No. 670, Guoshun Road
No.670 Guoshun Road
Shanghai, 200433
China

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