Abstract: Objective: To analyze the demographic trends of receiving remote care for people in a medical center in recent years, as a reference for the future development of medical institutions. As a result, adopting remote care for the prevention and control of cardiovascular diseases has become a trend, and people's need for such healthcare options has increased. Methods: This study collected data from 1 621 remote care cases monitored by a medical center in Taiwan between July 2013 and May 2018. Results: Most of the case patients were female (n=1 019) and had an average age of 71.0±24.7 years. In addition, most were patients who had undergone a single treatment after community-based screening (69.1%), followed by those who had undergone treatment for <1 year. The average duration of case management was 4.2 months. Most patients had received diagnosis for cardiovascular diseases (n=394; 45%), followed by hypertension (n=308; 35%). Physician interpretation of electrocardiogram readings revealed that the conditions of most of the case patients were diagnosed as normal cardiac rhythm (n=1 315; 71.5%), followed by atrial fibrillation (n=133; 7.2%). The medical center made 1 378 reassurance phone calls (24.1%) to the patients with abnormal values detected and 3 787 regular reassurance phone calls (65.9%) to all patients. Conclusions: The study results determined that remote care effectively assist in identifying patients with sporadic atrial fibrillation for early treatment. Moreover, although reassurance phone calls increase the number of clinical visits by patients, they can also reduce the number of hospital admissions as well as hospital admission risks, thereby yielding economic benefits. This study recommends that the scope of health insurance benefits be extended to remote care to enhance the continuity and quality of care.

Key words: cardiovascular disease; remote care; electrocardiography