ED Alert Cuts Non-Emergency Visits In Half
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Indiana HIE has success using real-time alerts in the emergency department, reduced non-emergency visits by 53 percent
The Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) is, according to its website, “A non-profit organization formed by the Regenstrief Institute, private hospitals, local and state health departments, BioCrossroads, and other healthcare and community organizations in Indiana. It operates the nation’s largest health information exchange, providing a statewide health information technology network that connects over 90 hospitals, long-term care facilities, rehabilitation centers, community health clinics, and other healthcare providers in Indiana. This network serves an area with a population of about six million people and over 25,000 physicians throughout the country.”
AHRQ Research studied IHIE and reports it “provides health plans and Medicare-chartered accountable care organizations with daily alerts on members of their attributed populations (e.g., health plan members, individuals assigned to the Medicare accountable care organizations) who have visited an emergency department or were admitted to the hospital in the past 24 hours. Based on near real-time data, these notices (known as admission, discharge, transfer alerts) allow the receiving organization to act on the information in a timely manner. In a pilot test, the program helped a managed health plan improve quality and lower costs by significantly reducing nonurgent emergency department visits, replacing them with lower cost primary care visits.”
According to AHRQ, the program has been a success. “The alert program helped a managed health plan improve quality and lower costs by significantly reducing nonurgent ED visits, replacing them with lower cost primary care visits.
- Shifting nonurgent visits from ED to primary care: During the 6-month trial with 9 Central Indiana hospitals, the 320,000-member managed health plan reduced nonurgent ED visits among members served by these hospitals by 53 percent, while simultaneously increasing primary care office visits by 68 percent.
- Significant cost savings: The shift from ED to primary care visits that occurred during the pilot test saved the health plan an estimated $2 to $4 million over the 6-month period. As noted earlier, the program has now expanded to cover the vast majority of plan members (not just those served by the 9 hospitals in Central Indiana); consequently, the savings generated for the plan has likely increased.”
Fierce Health IT summarizes the research, writing, “Providing near-real-time notice when patients visit the emergency room might be more useful and cost-effective initially than a full-fledged health information exchange.
“Among its lessons learned from this ADT project is that program leaders should avoid the "build-it-and-they-will-come" approach. Author Curt Sellke, the IHIE's vice president of analytics, advocates soliciting feedback from potential users to find out how information from multiple data sources could be collected, analyzed, combined, and transmitted in ways that would be useful to them.”
Want to publish your opinion?