Hospital Readmission Rates for Patients Receiving In-Person vs. Telemedicine Discharge Follow-Up Care

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Figure 1.
Schema for selection of study population and cohort divisions. Abbreviations: TCM, transitions of care management.

Table 1.

Patient Demographics Across Cohorts

Patient Demographics	Office	Telemedicine	Total Patients
Patient Demographics	12,846	1,048	13,891
Race
White	11,671 (90.90%)	919 (87.90%)	12,590 (90.60%)
Black or African American	475 (3.69%)	62 (5.93%)	537 (3.84%)
American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander	39 (0.30%)	3 (0.28%)	42 (0.30%)
Asian	72 (0.56%)	7 (0.67%)	79 (0.57%)
total: unknown, declined, not reported, Other^a	788 (6.04%)	57 (5.43%)	701 (5.04%)
Ethnicity
Not Hispanic OR Latino	12,128 (94.4%)	980 (93.70%)	13,108 (93.80%)
Hispanic OR Latino	491 (3.82%)	54 (5.16%)	545 (3.89%)
Other	227 (1.76%)	11 (1.05%)	238 (1.70%)
Legal sex
Male	6,395 (49.80%)	466 (44.60%)	6,861 (49.10%)
Female	6,451 (50.20%)	579 (55.40%)	7,030 (50.20%)
Age
0 to 19	97 (0.76%)	8 (0.76%)	105 (0.75%)
20-39 years	656 (5.11%)	105 (10.04%)	761 (5.44%)
40-59 years	2,453 (19.10%)	309 (29.50%)	2,762 (19.75%)
60-79 years	6,555 (51.00%)	474 (45.35%)	7,029 (50.30%)
80-110 years	3,289 (25.60%)	159 (15.20%)	3,448 (24.70%)
No Value^b	41 (0.31%)	1 (0.09%)	42 (0.30%)
Risk score
Low risk (<9)	4,316 (33.50%)	424 (40.50%)	4,740 (33.90%)
Med risk (9 to 16)	4,863 (37.80%)	299 (28.60%)	5,162 (36.92%)
High risk (>16)	2,993 (23.30%)	239 (22.90%)	3,232 (23.11%)
No value	676 (5.26%)	83 (7.94%)	759 (5.42%)
Insurance type
High Mark, Blue Cross, WellSpan Pop Health	2,059 (16.00%)	240 (22.97%)	2,299 (16.44%)
Medicare	8,873 (69.10%)	588 (56.20%)	9,461 (67.70%)
Medicaid	731 (5.26%)	92 (8.80%)	823 (5.89%)
Other commercial	459 (3.57%)	46 (4.40%)	505 (3.61%)

↵a total: unknown, declined, not reported, Other refers to patients not reported or declined or not documented due to administrative errors.
↵b Likely represents administrative error in charting.
c SlicerDicer was only able to measure proportions of encounters associated with the financial payer class and self-pay was unable to be measured. These proportions should be interpreted as approximate given that patients may have switched payers within the study time. For Medicare and Medicaid, there may be redundancy of patients who have had both payer types. Overall interpretation of above proportions is comparable distributions across the cohorts.