Houston-area emergency rooms are packed and the taxpayer price tag is climbing. But one doctor's idea could not only shorten ER waits and save money, but could dramatically improve the health of Houston's most vulnerable patients...
Read the complete article on the ClickToHouston here.
Published On: Jun 17 2014 in KPRC.
A new program of identifying patients who most frequently go to Houston-area emergency rooms and then coordinating their medical care has reduced ER visits by 85% in just three months, according to preliminary findings released today by the Primary Care Innovation Center (PCIC).
PCIC research is based on patients identified as "superutilizers" – patients who use emergency rooms across Houston more than 10 times in one year. During the three months before the PCIC program, eight of those patients visited an ER a total of 65 times.
Intensive users of medical services account for 21% of the Medicaid budget in Texas. Four patients used emergency rooms at 19 different Houston hospitals a total of 179 times last year, according to Primary Care Innovation Center, a Houston nonprofit. One patient had a total of 56 visits to 10 different emergency rooms. These intensive users of medical services - in the jargon, "super-utilizers" - account for 21 percent of the Medicaid budget in Texas, according to Primary Care Innovation Center.
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