A comparative cost analysis of an integrated military telemental health-care service

The National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, integrated telemental health care into its primary behavioral health-care outreach service in 1998. To date, there have been over 1800 telemental health visits, and the service encounters approximately 100 visits per month at this time. The objective of this study was to compare and contrast the costs to the beneficiary, the medical system, and the military organization as a whole via one of the four methods currently employed to access mental health care from remotely located military medical clinics. The four methods include local access via the military's civilian health maintenance organization (HMO) network, patient travel to the military treatment facility, military mental health specialists' travel to the remote clinic (circuit riding) and TeleMental Healthcare (TMH). Interactive video conferencing, phone, electronic mail, and facsimile were used to provide telemental health care from a military treatment facility to a remote military medical clinic. The costs of health-care services, equipment, patient travel, lost work time, and communications were tabulated and evaluated. While the purpose of providing telemental healthcare services was to improve access to mental health care for our beneficiaries at remote military medical clinics, it became apparent that this could be done at comparable or reduced costs.