By EWA MATUSZEWSKI
CEO MedNetOne Health Solutions
For years, there’s been a concerted effort by insurance companies to halt the number of unnecessary visits to the Emergency Department. (Note – it is no longer a room.) This was a wise move designed to contain overall health care costs and excessive—and often unmerited—testing. While numbers are still too high, there’s been a decrease in the number of visits over the past several years.
That’s good news, the education on not using the ED like a physician’s office is working! Yet the shift from the ED to urgent care clinics or primary care physicians, where patients’ nonemergent needs are best met, resulted in reduced fees to hospitals and health systems. Darn those unintended consequences! Coupled with the trends of decreasing hospital admissions and shortened hospital stays, something needed to be done, right? In response, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released a five-level emergency department triage algorithm that stratifies patients into five groups, from least to most urgent, based on patient acuity and resource needs; but left out of the reimbursement bonanza are PCPS rightfully doing the same work in their own office – which they pay for.
PCPs can’t charge an exorbitant facility fee, while hospitals and emergency departments can. An ambulatory sensitive condition such as a strep throat isn’t generally a level 5 case, even though it can escalate into a very serious health risk if not treated, but do you want to bet that it’s been coded as such in the ED?
Interestingly, I stumbled across this article on how Emergency Departments are monopolies, with patients paying the cost, around the same time I was reviewing data for our own organization’s patient population ED use. It’s the 80/20 rule all over again, with a small number of patients incurring the majority of ED costs. And unlike the article’s thesis, I felt like we were paying the costs.
Staying on the ED theme, I recently participated in a Detroit area community health forum looking at reducing emergency department costs. I found myself wondering if Detroit-area hospitals (and likely those in other large metropolitan areas throughout the country) continue to increase unnecessary ED use by advertising ED wait times? If the doctor will see me in 20 minutes and I live close by, why should I see my PCP and risk having to wait in the office for an hour to be “worked-in” while pre-scheduled patients are seen? I also discovered that emergency department professional services have not gone through any auditing process to determine whether the level of acuity warrants the reimbursement received. Yet, office-based services are being reviewed by a national vendor and repriced. Repricing is occurring more frequently. Those pesky unintended consequences again! ED overuse is not a new issue – but it appears that options to curb abuse are causing the healthcare balloon to bulge elsewhere, with PCPs paying the price.
Segueing into an ED alternative leads me to a new favorite topic – house calls. Some physician members of our organization are now making house calls again, perhaps prompted by the CDC’s new push for an old practice. House calls peaked mid-century and were almost completely out of favor by the 1970s. Now, they may be slowly regaining steam, as PCPs hit the streets for true community based care. Will their visits help limit ED use? How could they not? Will PCPs be reimbursed accordingly for their efforts? Stay tuned.