Does Telemedicine Reduce Emergency Room Congestion? Evidence from New York State

Shujing Sun (), Susan F. Lu () and Huaxia Rui ()
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Shujing Sun: Simon Business School, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627
Susan F. Lu: Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907
Huaxia Rui: Simon Business School, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627

Information Systems Research, 2020, vol. 31, issue 3, 972-986

Abstract: Overcrowding in emergency rooms (ERs) is a common yet nagging problem. It not only is costly for hospitals but also compromises care quality and patient experience. Hence, finding effective ways to improve ER care delivery is of great importance. Using a large data set covering all emergency visits in New York State from 2010 to 2014, we investigate whether telemedicine enhances ER care delivery. We show that, on average, telemedicine availability in the ER significantly reduces average patients’ length of stay (LOS), which is partially driven by the flexible resource allocation. Specifically, the adoption of telemedicine leads to a larger reduction in ER LOS when there is a demand surge or supply shortage. Furthermore, such improvement is not a by-product of other widely adopted health IT applications and does not come at the expense of care quality or patient cost. We also replicate the analysis using annual U.S. hospital data and find that ER telemedicine adoption significantly reduces average patients’ waiting time, which suggests that the LOS reduction partially comes from the reduction of waiting time.

Keywords: telemedicine; emergency department; overcrowding; health information technology; length of stay; waiting time; service time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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