Follow-up-rate Decision for Virtual and Office Appointments in Chronic Care

摘要

Patients suffering a chronic disease often require regular appointment and treatment. Due to the constraints on the availability of office appointments and the capacity of physicians, access to chronic care can be limited; consequently, patients may fail to receive the recommended care suggested by clinical guidelines. Virtual appointments can provide a cost-effective alternative to traditional office appointments for managing chronic conditions. However, it is important and challenging to fully integrate the virtual appointments with the office appointments. One of the important decisions for this integration is the determination of the follow-up rate. Follow-up rate, which is the frequency of patient appointments, is significant for both patients and clinics. A good follow-up rate leads to the efficient use of the physicians' time and the controlled health status for patients. It is also challenging to determine the efficient follow-up rate. Hence, in this study, we consider the integration of virtual and office and appointments in chronic care setting and build the mathematical model to investigate the optimal follow-up rates for both virtual and office appointments. In this work, we develop an open migration network to simulate the patients flow in the clinic system. With the model developed, decisions for the follow-up rate of the office and virtual appointments can be made more systematically.