Johnston 2000.

Methods	"quasi experimental", "randomly assigned to an intervention or control group", not clear why this is not described as a randomised controlled trial
Participants	Newly referred patients with COPD, congestive heart failure, cerebral vascular accident, cancer, diabetes, anxiety or need for wound care were randomly assigned to intervention (N = 102) or control (N = 110). The patients all had a projected need for two or more visits a week. The study took place in Sacramento California through a large health maintenance insurance organisation. 29 intervention group patients and 19 of the control group had COPD.
Interventions	Intervention: Both groups received routine home health care with visits and access to telephone contact. However, the study group also used a remote video system allowing nurses and patients to undertake virtual visits in real time any time during 24 hours a day. There was also equipment attached to the video for testing cardiopulmonary status. Control: Controls used routine healthcare with home care visits but without a video system. They also had access to telephone advice and triage.
Outcomes	1. Use of services. 2. Costs for inpatient and outpatient services. 3. Visits to emergency departments. 4. Costs for pharmacy services, laboratory, physician, emergency department visits, inpatient treatment, home healthcare costs and videoconferencing costs. 5. Patients' compliance with medication regimen. 6. Patients' knowledge about their disease. 7. Patients' ability to move towards self care. 8. Patient satisfaction survey.
Notes	Results and interventions for COPD patients are not presented separately from other illnesses
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	"quasi experimental", "randomly assigned to an intervention or control group"
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient information
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	No blinding
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Insufficient information
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	High risk	Total costs of items are reported rather than absolute numbers of emergency dept visits etc. However, this is in accordance to the methods implied reporting.
Other bias	High risk	Funded by Kaiser Permanente and so only collected data from plan members which may rule out balance of sociodemographic groups. COPD patients are not measured or analysed separately and so some data are of limited use.