Association of a School-Based, Asthma-Focused Telehealth Program With Emergency Department Visits Among Children Enrolled in South Carolina Medicaid.

IMPORTANCE

Telehealth may improve access to care for populations in rural communities. However, little is known about the effectiveness of telehealth programs designed for children.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the associations of a school-based telehealth program in Williamsburg county (South Carolina) with all-cause emergency department (ED) visits made by children enrolled in Medicaid.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This Medicaid claims data analysis was conducted in Williamsburg county and 4 surrounding counties in South Carolina and included children aged 3 to 17 years who were enrolled in Medicaid and living in any of the 5 counties from January 2012 to December 2017. Williamsburg served as the intervention and the 4 surrounding counties without a telehealth program as the control; 2012 to 2014 was designated as the preintervention period, whereas 2015 to 2017 served as the postintervention period. The study was designed with a difference-in-differences specification, in which the unit-of-analysis was a child-month, and a subsample included children with asthma. The data analysis was performed from July 2018 to February 2019.

EXPOSURES

The school-based telehealth program implemented in Williamsburg county in 2015.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

The binary outcome was the status of at least 1 all-cause ED visit by a child in a given month.

RESULTS

The full sample included 2 443 405 child-months from 23 198 children in Williamsburg county and 213 164 children in the control counties. The mean (SD) proportions of monthly ED visits in Williamsburg were 3.65% (0.10%) during the preintervention and 3.87% (0.11%) during the postintervention. The corresponding proportions of the 4 control counties were 3.37% preintervention (0.04%), and 3.56% postintervention (0.04%), respectively. The trends in the proportion were paralleled. In the asthma subsample, the proportions in Williamsburg were 3.16% (0.31%) during the preintervention and 3.38% (0.34%) during the postintervention, respectively. The proportions for the control counties were 3.02% preintervention (0.10%) and 3.90% postintervention (0.11%), respectively. There was an interaction of the proportions between the pre/postintervention period and the intervention/control counties in this subsample. The regression analysis of the full sample showed no association of the telehealth program with ED visits. The additional analysis of the asthma subsample showed that this program was associated with a reduction of 0.66 (95% CI, -1.16 to -0.17; P < .01) percentage point per 100 children per month in ED visits, representing an approximately 21% relative decrease.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

Although we found no association of this program with the ED visits of the overall studied population, this study suggests that telehealth with a focus on chronic pediatric diseases, such as asthma, may deliver substantial health benefits to rural and medically underserved communities.