Abstract
IntroductionWith the aim of reducing patient travel and related costs, physiotherapists and occupational therapists at the Oslo University Hospital began offering video consultations to patients with hand and arm injuries in March 2020. A feasibility study was initiated to describe the first year of using video consultations in the rehabilitation of upper extremity injuries in children and adults, and to assess the acceptability of the service from the perspective of hand therapists. The secondary objective of the study was to investigate the economic effects of using video consultation for this patient group.MethodsThe therapists documented the individual consultations in an Excel spreadsheet. Utility and acceptability were analyzed based on the content of each video consultation. The therapists also registered the patient’s municipality in order to calculate costs related to travel, accommodation, and other costs related to in-person consultation. Utility was analyzed using an early economic model based on scenario analysis to compare the costs of video consultations with in-person consultations.ResultsBased on the content analysis from 89 consultations, video consultations were deemed acceptable by the therapists. The total travel distance from patients’ homes to the hospital was 20,190 km, as hand rehabilitation is a national service. The video consultations that replaced the consultations at the hospital were potentially more time efficient, reduced patients’ travel time and absence from home and work, and saved costs for the Oslo University Hospital and society.ConclusionsBased on early decision support provided by this study, adaptions were made to the delivery of video consultations to improve the cost effectiveness of the service. The findings from this study provided an indication of the potential value of the new service, which may be used for benchmarking purposes to ensure that it meets the needs of users, the health service, and society.
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