TY  - JOUR
AU  - Burton, Brittany Nicole
AU  - Arastoo, Sara
AU  - Wu, Simon
AU  - Liu, Nancy
AU  - Ong, Michael K
AU  - Vazirani, Sondra
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/7/25
TI  - The Association of Medical Preoperative Evaluation Using Clinical Video Telehealth With Hospital Length of Stay: Descriptive Analysis
JO  - JMIR Form Res
SP  - e38054
VL  - 6
IS  - 7
KW  - telemedicine
KW  - telehealth
KW  - eHealth
KW  - digital health
KW  - hospital
KW  - length of stay
KW  - veteran's health
KW  - video
KW  - veteran
KW  - preoperative
KW  - outpatient
KW  - chart review
KW  - retrospective
KW  - clinical care
KW  - effectiveness
KW  - efficacy
KW  - discharge
AB  - Background: Preoperative medical evaluation serves to identify risk factors and optimize patients before surgery. Providing a telehealth option in the perioperative setting has played a significant role in reducing barriers to quality perioperative health care. Objective: We aimed to evaluate how telemedicine preoperative evaluations using Clinical Video Telehealth (CVT) impact hospital length of stay. Methods: We performed a retrospective chart review between 2016 and 2017 of adult patients who underwent evaluations in our hospitalist-run preoperative medicine clinic. Patients seen in our preoperative CVT program were compared to patients seen in person to evaluate the association of visit type (preoperative CVT versus in-person evaluation) with hospital length of stay, defined as hospital stay from postoperative day 0 to discharge. There were 62 patients included in this retrospective study. Results: The adjusted incidence rate ratio (IRR) for hospital length of stay was significantly shorter in patients who underwent preoperative CVT compared to an in-person visit (IRR 0.52, 95% CI 0.29-0.92, P=.02). Conclusions: After adjusting for age and comorbidities, we show that preoperative telemedicine in the perioperative setting is associated with a shorter hospital length of stay compared to in-person visits. This suggests that telemedicine can play a viable role in this clinical setting. 
SN  - 2561-326X
UR  - https://formative.jmir.org/2022/7/e38054
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/38054
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35877170
DO  - 10.2196/38054
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/38054
ER  -