Economic decision to use teledermatology: an application to Portuguese national health system

• Autor(a) principal: Pinto, João Furtado Severino
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/18264
• topic: Health economics; Decision analysis; Survival analysis; Teledermatology; Economia da saúde; Doença; Análise de decisão

The modeling strategy is designed to highlight the impact of health level’s uncertainty on using teledermatology in dermatology treatment. The option-pricing theory is followed very closely to develop a dynamic stochastic model for the optimal timing to use teledermatology. Its main value-added consists in the concrete application to a problem in medical decision taking, i.e. to patients with skin-care diseases. In the period from January 2017 to June 2017, a total of 152 patients were sent by 24 PCCs of the public health system to the Portuguese Dermatology Department of Hospital Garcia d’Orta (HGO). Patients were subjected to conventional care or teledermatology. The aim is to analyze the rate of treatment for their skin-diseases, under both lines of treatment. The empirical results support the findings of the analytical model. The results indicate that if the line of treatment is teledermatology, ceteris paribus, the rate of treatment increases around three-fold comparing to conventional care. The main policy implication of this thesis’ results is that there are strong advantages in terms of time and treatment rate of using and implementing teledermatology in the Portuguese NHS.