The Medical Care Continuity (MCC) project. A pilot study of video-assisted home care within the eTEN European Community program. The Italian experience.

<bold>Goals Of Work: </bold>This study aimed to use an integrated system (Medical Care Continuity (MCC) system) consisting of computer, video telephone, and a high-definition camera to monitor at home chemotherapy side effects in cancer outpatients.<bold>Patients and Methods: </bold>The system allowed 24 h/day video consultation with an intermediate medical call center with possible connection to a specialized hospital if necessary. All patients were provided with internationally validated and project-oriented questionnaires exploring patients' health status and opinions on usefulness and complexity of study devices. The content of each call was recorded on a computer database. An approximate estimate of avoided hospital admissions was calculated.<bold>Main Results: </bold>Median duration of experimentation and frequency of patient/doctor contacts were 2.1 months and 4.2 contact per week, respectively. Overall, a 98% positive opinions on the experimental system was reported at the end of the study by all participants, with a 21% conversion rate with respect to the opinions gathered at study entry. Changes in patient management after a medical call were made in 32% of cases. It was calculated that approximately 2.2 per month unnecessary hospital admissions were avoided.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>The MCC system was well managed by both patients and caregivers. These results show that it has the potential to improve medical assistance by virtue of a constant access to medical advice and reduce unnecessary hospital admissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]