Technology and managed care: patient benefits of telemedicine in a rural health care network
研究了农村医疗网络中远程医疗如何通过减少患者等待时间和成本，提高患者收益，并降低医生访问配给带来的损失。
Rural health providers have looked to telemedicine as a technology to reduce costs. However, virtual access to physicians and specialists may alter patients' demand for face-to-face physician access. We develop a model of service demand under managed care, and apply the model to a telemedicine application in rural Alaska. Provider-imposed delays and patient costs were highly significant predictors of patient contingent choices in a survey of ENT clinic patients. The results suggest that telemedicine increased estimated patient benefits by about $40 per visit, and reduced patients' loss from rationing of access to physicians by about 20%.