Telecommunications and Cost Savings in Health Care Services

Patterns of telecommunications usage in the health care sector are assessed, and the econometric modeling techniques used to estimate cost savings associated with telecommunications usage are described. Statistical findings are detailed that help substantiate hypotheses that the health care services industry may have foregone substantial cost savings by failing to more aggressively employ telecommunications technologies. Emphasis is placed on using the modeling procedure to integrate and expand existing projections of health care costs, and to estimate the ways that telecommunications services might reduce health care costs through the year 2000. In particular, an examination is made of the statistical methods that researchers at DRI-McGraw-Hill have used to determine what cost savings associated with the health care industry's usage of telecommunications can be calculated. The econometric techniques used by DRI to estimate telecommunications services' contributions to cost savings in the health care sector are presented.