Relation between telecare implementation and number of treatment days in a Japanese town

We analysed data on the medical expenditure of 199 telecare users in Nishi-aizu Town, Fukushima Prefecture, which has one of the oldest ongoing telecare implementations in Japan. As controls, 450 out of 3528 non-users residents covered by National Health Insurance were randomly selected in the same age and sex ratios as the telecare users. An analysis by the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) was conducted in order to examine causality, i.e. that telecare use reduces the number of treatment days. To reduce sample selection bias, the presence of chronic diseases, age and education were added as control variables in the estimation. The results show that the treatment days of those who had chronic diseases were greater than those who did not have chronic diseases by 8.7 days per year (P < 0.10), and they were increased by 5.6 days (P < 0.01) according to their age. Finally, telecare use decreased treatment days by 3.1 days (P < 0.05).