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The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries

Health services provided through the telecommunications system aim to improve the population’s health and well-being. This research aims to explore what digital, economic, and health factors are associated with the provision of telehealth services, especially in ageing communities. Applying Organiza...

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Autores principales: Wang, Fuhmei, Wang, Jung-Der
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8392622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34444037
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168288
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author Wang, Fuhmei
Wang, Jung-Der
author_facet Wang, Fuhmei
Wang, Jung-Der
author_sort Wang, Fuhmei
collection PubMed
description Health services provided through the telecommunications system aim to improve the population’s health and well-being. This research aims to explore what digital, economic, and health factors are associated with the provision of telehealth services, especially in ageing communities. Applying Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries’ experiences, this research tries to construct a logistic regression model between adopting a telehealth system or not, a binary outcome variable, and a group of potentially explanatory variables. Estimation results showed that there were thresholds for telehealth provision: The demand for telehealth service usually began when the provision of telecommunication accessibility reached 50%, the proportion of elders exceeded 10%, or the proportion of health spending occupied more than 3–5% of the gross domestic product (GDP); the slope of each variable seemed to correspond with an increase in demand for such a provision. A growing number of individuals in OECD countries are now readily served by telehealth systems under the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings could be regarded as a model for other countries for implementing the necessary infrastructure early on when any of these parameters reaches its threshold. Moreover, telehealth applied in developing countries could be elevated for wider populations to access basic health services and for the remote delivery of health care. A rational decision could be made to appropriately use additional resources in telehealth provision. With accessible e-health services, the population’s health could be improved, which in turn would possibly increase productivity and social welfare.
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spelling pubmed-83926222021-08-28 The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries Wang, Fuhmei Wang, Jung-Der Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Health services provided through the telecommunications system aim to improve the population’s health and well-being. This research aims to explore what digital, economic, and health factors are associated with the provision of telehealth services, especially in ageing communities. Applying Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries’ experiences, this research tries to construct a logistic regression model between adopting a telehealth system or not, a binary outcome variable, and a group of potentially explanatory variables. Estimation results showed that there were thresholds for telehealth provision: The demand for telehealth service usually began when the provision of telecommunication accessibility reached 50%, the proportion of elders exceeded 10%, or the proportion of health spending occupied more than 3–5% of the gross domestic product (GDP); the slope of each variable seemed to correspond with an increase in demand for such a provision. A growing number of individuals in OECD countries are now readily served by telehealth systems under the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings could be regarded as a model for other countries for implementing the necessary infrastructure early on when any of these parameters reaches its threshold. Moreover, telehealth applied in developing countries could be elevated for wider populations to access basic health services and for the remote delivery of health care. A rational decision could be made to appropriately use additional resources in telehealth provision. With accessible e-health services, the population’s health could be improved, which in turn would possibly increase productivity and social welfare. MDPI 2021-08-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8392622/ /pubmed/34444037 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168288 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Wang, Fuhmei
Wang, Jung-Der
The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries
title The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries
title_full The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries
title_fullStr The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries
title_full_unstemmed The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries
title_short The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries
title_sort determinants of telehealth provision: empirical evidence from oecd countries
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8392622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34444037
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168288
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