Dive Brief:
- A clinic-based multidisciplinary team help cut frequent emergency department user visits at a University of Florida Health hospital in Gainesville, Fierce Healthcare reported.
- Researchers examined the hospital's EMR and found the 473 patients accounted for 5,728 ED visits and 2,044 hospitalizations.
- According to MedPage Today, after intervention from the Care One Clinic, patients who were admitted more than eight times the previous year saw relative risk reductions of 22% for ED use, 30% for hospitalizations and 24% for days spent in the hospital.
Dive Insight:
This project demonstrates that hospitals that pour additional resources into ED super-users can have dramatic effect on their ED usage. In this case, the resources included a social worker offering transportation assistance and access to resources like meetings with doctors and a clinical pharmacist for medication assessment. While putting together such a team might be an effort and expense, it seems likely that the long-term savings are well worth the investment.