A pilot test conducted at the Indiana Health Information Exchange suggests alerting primary care providers to their patients' emergency department visits is key to achieving the cost savings and appropriate resource utilization promised by HIEs.
IHIE provides member health plans and Medicare-chartered accountable care organizations with daily alerts on which covered patients were admitted to the hospital or visited the ED within the past 24 hours. During the six-month, nine-hospital test pilot, exchange officials analyzed the results of providing this information to a 320,000-member health plan.
During the trial, the health plan was able to intervene with at-risk patients and reduce the number of non-urgent ED visits by 53 percent and increase primary care office visits by 68 percent. This shift saved the health plan an estimated $2 to $4 million during the six-month period.
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