Note: UCSF Researcher Renee Y. Hsia, MD, is currently a CTSI KL2 Scholar.
By Elizabeth Fernandez at UCSF.edu
Visits to the emergency room are not always for true medical emergencies – and some policymakers have been fighting the problem by denying or limiting payments if the patient’s diagnosis upon discharge is for “nonemergency” conditions.
A new UC San Francisco study challenges that framework by showing that criteria used as a basis to determine the appropriateness of an ER visit and to deny payment is inherently flawed. The study analyzed nearly 35,000 visits to hospital emergency departments around the country.
The research is published online in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Overuse of the ER for nonemergency visits is often touted as a costly problem in the United States. The new study highlights the complexity of the issue by showing that using discharge diagnoses to determine the validity of an ER visit could have serious implications, including dissuading patients from using the ER when they really need it.
Read more at UCSF.edu