Cost Study: Inpatient Care Cost

Client: An individual engaged in Medicaid services.

Treatment Group: Group of tele clients with shared common characteristics (for example, they received services in the same State Fiscal Year, used the same teleservice types, belonged to the same Medicaid risk groups, had similar comorbidity indices, had the same specified chronic diseases, had similar demographics, etc.).

Comparison Group: Group of non-tele clients who closely match the tele clients of a treatment group.
Teleservices: Service delivered through telemedicine, telehealth, and telemonitoring, as defined by the state of Texas.

Tele visit: Category of teleservices in which the client’s visit with a provider or health care professional is done virtually rather than in person.
Tele visits encompass both telemedicine and telehealth services but not telemonitoring. Telemonitoring is a separate category since the mode of service provision is significantly different.

Telemonitoring: defined in Texas Government Code §531.001(4-a) as the “...scheduled remote monitoring of data related to a patient's health and transmission of the data to a licensed home and community support services agency or a hospital." In the Texas Medicaid program, home telemonitoring requires an RN or other qualified health care professional.

Medicaid Risk Groups: Specified groups of clients of particular interest to policy makers. Risk groups are created based on Medicaid category of assistance program. Risk groups distinguished in this report include:

Pre-cost: Total medical or pharmaceutical costs for the six-month period preceding an index month. Does not include the index month. 
Post-cost: Total medical or pharmaceutical costs for the six-month period following an index month. Does not include the index month.