title: A method for identifying comparison counties: application to a rural telemedicine evaluation project.
abstract: The evaluation of telemedicine activity in rural communities is complicated by the fact that most telemedicine sites are chosen because of their existing telecommunications infrastructure and institutional relationships, not by a random selection process. In addition, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the effects of telemedicine without a careful analysis of parallel changes in communities which do not have access to telemedicine services. We have developed a method of identifying comparable counties based on an aggregate measure of health status. A set of 66 variables was collected in a previous project to develop a model to evaluate the relative health status of the population in Missouri. A stepwise regression was used to identify a subset of 15 variables that had the highest predictive value for the health status of a county. Distance measures were then used to identify six counties which were most similar to three telemedicine counties. The method can be used with any study set chosen non-randomly, to identify similar objects that can be used for comparative purposes.
authors.affiliation: Missouri Telemedicine Network, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. hicksl@health.missouri.edu
authors.forename: L L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Hicks
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Koenig
authors.forename: K E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Boles
authors.forename: R W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Madsen
authors.forename: B W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Kling
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Mitchell
authors.forename: W D
authors.initials: WD
authors.lastname: Webb
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Tracy
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D006801:Humans; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012107:Research Design; D019035:Rural Health Services; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000379:methods*