Are you a provider, payor or population health organization looking for a quick tune-up to your existing strategy and planning? Then look no further. In this series of posts, we’ll be sharing 7 quick wins the ACG System offers its users.

This week: identifying and addressing potentially avoidable emergency care

Emergency Departments (EDs) are an essential link in the health care system; however, they can often become safety nets for non-urgent health care needs or treatment of conditions that could have been addressed in a primary care setting. ED visits for non-urgent conditions strain limited health care resources, incur unnecessary health care costs, and contribute to suboptimal care coordination. Fortunately, the ACG System can help users identify and address these potentially avoidable visits, to streamline access to health services for patients.

The ACG System classifies ED visits into eleven granular categories. System users may use the visit- and patient-level outputs to quantify trends by patient type, chronic disease, and provider subgroup. The ACG System easily identifies patients who have ED visits for non-emergent or PCP-treatable diagnoses. Ultimately, this classification system reveals visits that could have been addressed at a lower level of care.

The Win

When ACG System users know which patients could benefit from increased primary care, they can take action, whether connecting these patients with a primary care provider, educating patients on preventive care, or utilizing case management. Revealing data to provider and health system stakeholders can drive change, particularly in situations where Emergency Departments are overburdened. Ultimately, analytics-driven interventions can reduce unnecessary ED visits, improve primary care relationships, and free up ED resources for more critical patient needs. That’s a win in our book.

Want to know more?

Take a deep dive into ED visit classification statistics and how they can reveal potential cost savings:

Infographic: Reducing unnecessary and costly use of emergency departments

Article: A Revised Classification Algorithm for Assessing Emergency Department Visit Severity of Populations 

Other posts in this series:

Quick Win #1: Optimize Enrollment in Existing Programs
Quick Win #2: Streamline Medication Needs
Quick Win #3: Effectively Manage Multimorbidity
Quick Win #4: Maximize Primary Care Provider (PCP) Usage

While these techniques are focused on US customers, we have parallel suggestions for international ACG System users, developed by our team based in Europe with support from one of our UK users, Sollis. Please contact us for more information.