Many patients with chronic heart failure experience a reduced health status, leading to readmission after hospitalization despite receiving conventional care. Telemonitoring approaches aim to improve the early detection of heart failure decompensations and prevent readmissions. However, knowledge about the impact of telemonitoring on preventing readmissions and related costs remains scarce.
The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of adding a telemonitoring solution to the standard of care (SOC) for the prevention of hospitalization and related costs in patients with heart failure in Finland.
A nonrandomized pre-post telemonitoring study was performed to estimate health care costs and resource use during 6 months on SOC followed by 6 months on SOC with a novel telemonitoring solution. The telemonitoring solution consisted of a digital platform for patient-reported symptoms and daily weight and blood pressure measurements, automatically generated alerts triggering phone calls with secondary care nurses, and rapid response to alerts by treating physicians. Telemonitoring solution data were linked to patient register data on primary care, secondary care, and hospitalization. The patient register of the Southern Savonia Social and Health Care Authority (Essote) was used.
As a results, the hospitalization-related cost decreased (49%) during telemonitoring. Only 14% of patients during telemonitoring were hospitalized within the 6-months period as 47% of patients during SOC were hospitalized. The total cost of care resulted in a 33% reduction with telemonitoring. The study was published in February 2024.
As a conclusion, the results suggest that the telemonitoring solution can reduce hospital-related costs for patients with heart failure with a recent hospital admission. The study was conducted in collaboration between Roche Diagnostics, Nordic Healthcare Group (NHG) and the Southern Savonia Social and Health Care Authority (now Southern Savonia Wellbeing Services County).