Psychiatric inpatient care planning via telemedicine

We assessed the costs of psychiatric inpatient care-planning consultations to remote areas using videoconferencing, instead of the conventional face-t o-face consultations at a hospital. The data were collected from all wards at the department of psychiatry of Oulu University Hospital over 11 months. A total of 14 videoconferences were conducted with two primary-care centre s located 220 km and 160 km from Oulu. During the same period, 20 conventio nal consultations at the Oulu University Hospital were also assessed. A que stionnaire was completed by a total of 124 patients, relatives and health-c are personnel; the response rate was about 90%. Of the respondents, 90% wer e satisfied with the quality of communication afforded by videoconferencing . At a workload of 20 patients per year, the cost of the videoconferences w as FM2510 per patient; the cost of the conventional alternative was FM4750 per patient. At 50 care consultations per year, a remote municipality would save about FM117,000.