Dive Brief:
- The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) conducted a statewide analysis of 2012 emergency department visits and hospital admissions and found almost 1.3 million "potentially preventable" visits.
- The total cost of those visits was about $2 billion.
- The analysis uncovered a number of factors that could have resulted in more positive outcomes, including better medication management, more timely access to primary care, improved care coordination and improved health literacy.
Dive Insight:
According to the analysis, 40% of ED visits were by Medicaid patients. The most common diagnoses that led to the "potentially preventable" visits included upper respiratory infections (9%), abdominal pain (7%) and musculoskeletal/connective tissue conditions (7%).
In a related statement, Ed Ehlinger, Minnesota's Commissioner of Health, acknowledged that there was room for improvement. "Equipped with these findings, we will work with providers and community leaders to ensure patients more consistently receive the right care, in the right place at the right time," he said.
Even so, officials admitted that there's no easy fix. "This work requires approaches that look not just at coordinating medical care but at addressing social factors and preventing these events from happening in the first place," Ross Owen, director of Hennepin Health, a health plan provider, told Healthcare Finance News. "This MDH report is an important statewide step toward understanding that opportunity."