Introduction
trauma
The adoption of digital technologies has progressed only gradually in health care systems, and uncertainty, especially with respect to the suitability and financial effects, has often acted as a drag on the broader use of digital health applications such as telemedicine [To support stakeholders’ decision-making on the long-term use of telemedicine in orthopedic and trauma surgery, analyses from a health provider’s perspective based on clinical data are required. Critical insights concerning the suitability of video consultations for patient care and the financial effects associated with telemedicine can be obtained by performing health economic evaluations.This health economic evaluation aims to provide the first German analysis of the suitability of video consultations in the follow-up care of patients in orthopedic and trauma surgery, to investigate the associated financial and personnel impact, and to provide a basis for future decision-making on implementing telemedicine from a health provider’s perspective based on data from a randomized controlled trial (RCT). All economic analyses will be conducted from a health provider’s perspective, that is, from the perspective of the economic entity providing the health service. In this analysis, the economic entity providing follow-up care is a German university hospital. University hospitals provide the highest level of care in the German health care system and serve as important pioneers for establishing new standards of care.Germany is the largest European health care market, with health expenditures of €457 billion (US $502.34 billion) in 2021 [Health economic evaluations of medical services and procedures, including telemedicine, are helpful at 2 distinct levels. First, on the macro level, health expenditures constitute a sizable part of spending for national economies. Data from the OECD show that OECD countries’ health care spending averaged about 8.8% of their gross domestic product before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019. Individual countries, such as the United States at 16.8% and Germany at 11.7%, spent a significantly higher share on health [In this analysis, we go beyond the health economic analysis of the RCT’s implemented scenario of 2 hours of video consultations per week. We extend our analysis with extensive calculations for scaling up video consultations in specific hospital departments as well as the entire hospital, analyzing the health economic effects of video consultations for 1%-10% of all patients who receive outpatient care at the hospital.