At the University of Buffalo, doctors are working with technology in emergency departments to limit the frequency of repeated visits to the facility.
The dashboard program created by the hospital will incorporate clinical data pulled from electronic health records and include alert messages regarding discharges. This will be integral for patients with chronic diseases who frequently visit care centers, leave after a few days only to be readmitted within the next month. As a result, costs begin to rise for all stakeholders involved to effectively manage these conditions.
Every year, Medicare spends roughly $15 billion on readmissions alone. Better communication and workflows are needed to reduce these exorbitant expenses. By connecting primary care physicians with patients and their families, the University of Buffalo was awarded a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality – worth almost $300,000 – to expand its dashboard technology.
The information that gets integrated into the platform will be used by care coordinators to create individualized plans for patients by assessing various factors, including health literacy of the patient, financial resource issues and home environment. The provider will reach out to patients over the telephone to ensure that patient-centered care is being delivered.
Alert system within EHRs
The University of Buffalo is far from being the only hospital implementing new systems, as the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine developed an automated tool integrated into EHRs to predict patient readmissions, FierceEMR reported.
Researchers, led by Craig Umscheid, M.D., senior author and director of the Penn Medicine Center for Medicine-based Practice, determined that patients who were admitted to the hospital twice a year are at a high risk of readmission within 30 days of discharge. The automated tool would create a flag in the patients’ EHRs, alerting providers to the risks. Identifying these individuals can help hospitals provide increased interventions, such as home services and follow-up calls.
“By automating the process of readmission risk prediction, we were able to provide risk assessment quickly and efficiently in real time, enabling all members of the inpatient team to carry out a coordinated approach to discharge planning, with special attention paid to those identified as being at the highest risk for readmission,” said Umscheid, quoted by FierceEMR.
Reducing readmissions is a major focus of healthcare reform, as it can help trim costs and increase profit margins for facilities.
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