The role of telemedicine towards improved sustainability in health care and societal productivity in Turkey

The COVID-19 pandemic increased utilization of telemedicine for diagnosis and treatment. While telemedicine is not the panacea for the increasing health care burden, it can alleviate the problem. Here, the hypothetical impact of delivering telehealth care to patients in a busy tertiary cardio-vascular clinic in Istanbul, Turkey, is examined. Additionally, the potential environmental and societal ramifications of telemedicine are also examined.

Demographics, health care costs, wages, productivity, and patient-specific data were exploited to develop a hypothetical telemedicine framework for the Turkish health care landscape. Specifically, the distance traveled and travel time to receive care using real-life location of the clinics and patients addresses seeking care are tabulated.

Data from August 3, 2015 to January 25, 2023 resulted in 45,602 unique encounters with 448 unique diagnoses recorded for the patient encounters. The patients in the top 5% of the most common diagnoses traveled 23.82 ± 96.3 km to reach the clinics. Based on our model and the related literature that telehealth care for chronic diseases is not inferior to face-to-face care, 656,258 km would have been saved if all patients were to take the first visit in person followed by telemedicine visits. The travel-associated carbon footprint and wage losses for in-person care in lieu of telehealth appointments is calculated and it was observed that exploiting telemedicine could have saved approximately 30% carbon footprint and prevented approximately $878,000 wage loss. As a result, it is found that application of telemedicine could ease the burden on patients, environment, increase access, and prevent the wage losses caused by unnecessary hospital visits.