An economic evaluation of an advanced video conferencing system for cardiac multidisciplinary team meetings.

INTRODUCTION Current UK and international guidelines advocate the need for multidisciplinary team (MDT) discussion of selected patients undergoing either percutaneous or surgical cardiac procedures to decide the optimal treatment strategy. To date it is unknown if using videoconference facilities is cost effective. Therefore we performed a cost analysis of using a high-speed internet video conferencing system compared with conventional face-to-face MDT meetings. METHODS Costs of running a conventional MDT meeting versus a video conferencing MDT were modelled and compared over a two-year period. Participants were also surveyed on the overall effectiveness of conducting remote MDTs. RESULTS The set up and maintenance cost of the video conferencing system over two years was £30400. The staff costs of running the face-to-face MDT were £95970 and the video conferencing MDT was £23992.50. The total travel costs of the conventional face-to-face MDTs were £10555.34. In total the cost of the conventional face-to-face MDT was £106525.34 and the video conferencing MDT was £54392.50 representing a cost saving of 48.9%. Participants rated the effectiveness of conducing a remote MDT and the ease of technology use as very good. CONCLUSIONS Video conferencing systems provide a highly cost-effective method of facilitating MDT meetings between cardiologists and cardiac surgeons at remote centres.