Practice Management
Emergency department spending jumped 85% over a 7-year period ending in 2015, according to new research by the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI), even though ED use remained relatively stable. The reason for the increase in spending, according to the report, is that hospitals coded and charged more for high-severity cases during that timeframe. Drawing on charges associated with more than 70 million ED bills, HCCI found that visits billed to CPT codes 99285 and …
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Trying to relocate nonemergent patients from overcrowded emergency rooms to clinics and urgent care centers by ambulance led to out-of-control costs in the San Diego area. In addition, it’s been shown that some 30% of people who call 911 for an ambulance didn’t even need emergent care to begin with. So, health officials hit on the idea of calling a taxi or an Uber to take patients where they need to be. The question is, …
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Plans to reopen an emergency room that closed in 2014 have been scrapped in favor of expanding the hours of a nearby urgent care center in Spokane, WA. Administrators at the Mann-Grandstaff Veterans Affairs Medical Center haven’t hired enough physicians to staff the ED, so rather than delay further or try to get by on insufficient staffing, the plan is to keep the urgent care center open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. …
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Hospitals and health systems have been taking a hard look at how they can maintain financial stability in recent years. As you’ve read here, many are venturing into urgent care, both on and off campus. Now, some are taking another step toward becoming everyday community health providers by offering, essentially, primary care in their emergency rooms. An article in Modern Healthcare details how one of them, Carolinas Healthcare System, realized the same old way of …
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Health system administrators and fans of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) have been lauding the fact that employment in the healthcare industry has been climbing since the ACA was implemented. While that may be factually correct in terms of overall numbers, it is also true that health systems have been cutting jobs strategically in order to cut payroll expenses. Not too long ago, Becker’s Hospital Review identified 48 layoffs that have taken place …
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We’ve told you recently about plans some insurers have to stick patients with the bill for emergency room visits that are retrospectively determined to have been nonemergent in nature. In essence, if patients go to the ED with an illness or injury that could have been handled in a lower-acuity setting (such as an urgent care center), as determined by the insurer, the patient’s claim will be denied. Now the American Medical Association is demanding …
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Barely more than a third of children brought to an urgent care center or emergency room with anaphylaxis have received epinephrine before arriving, according to a new study published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. According to the report, which reflects the cases of 408 children with an average age of 7.25 years, just 36% of the patients had received epinephrine before reporting to an urgent care center or ED. The odds were …
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Cigna is collaborating with CVS Health to push members into retail clinics instead of visiting urgent care centers when they have immediate, nonemergent medical needs. The company claims that around 45% of urgent care visits could be handled in drugstore clinics—at a savings of 81% per visit for Cigna. The problem? Cigna’s data highlight the minority of patients seeking care. The majority (55%) could not be treated sufficiently in the retail setting, meaning they’d end …
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The University of Colorado Cancer Center in Aurora, CO has quantified just how much urgent care can contribute to the overall health of patients with cancer—and it’s considerable. The Clinical Assessment and Rapid Evaluation (CARE) Clinic within the cancer center helped keep 21% of cancer patients out of the emergency room, generating over $176,000 in revenue over a period of 7 months. There’s no telling how many potentially serious complications were prevented by saving immunocompromised …
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We all know emergency room waiting areas are choked with patients who could be treated just as well—and in less time for less money—in an urgent care center. That makes it all the more difficult for patients who really need to be there to be seen in a reasonable amount of time. Now Thomas Health System in Charleston, WV, thinks it has found a way to make people think twice about heading to the ED …
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