Tracking emergency department users across unaffiliated hospitals with a health information exchange can help better identify frequent ED users, potentially allowing for interventions such as improved case management to better allocate healthcare resources, according to a study in Health Affairs.
Researchers used the New York Clinical Health Information Exchange to identify patients who had visited the emergency departments of 10 hospitals in the New York City area more than four times in one month.
Results showed the HIE data identified 20.3 percent more ED "frequent fliers" than site-specific data. Additionally, researchers discovered frequent ED users are more likely than other patients to visit multiple EDs over the 12-month study period (28.8 percent versus 3 percent), emphasizing that better care coordination across facilities and better case management has the ability to reduce ED usage and better utilize ED resources.
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