Health Management Rx: Maryland Gets Million+ to Reroute “Unnecesary ER Visits”
Interesting: pay a group to keep people out of the ER, without actually specifying how they’re going to do it(but giving them legal cover to try).
It bears watching.
5 thoughts on “Health Management Rx: Maryland Gets Million+ to Reroute “Unnecesary ER Visits””
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There are many patients that don’t need to be in the ED. Toothache, medication refill, cold symptoms.
One way to reduce the use of the ED for non-emergent patients is to have a clinic that these people can be referred too from triage. Open at least from 11 am to 2 am but 24 hours would be better, this would relieve some of the pressure on the overcrowding on the ED.
Gruntdoc-
Thanks for posting…will be interesting to see how this goes down in MD – hope to see more docs tracking developments there.
Best –
JMG
Why can’t the non-emergencies be treated at urgent care clinics? Will they be turned away & have to wait to make an appt with their PCP? We have several urgent care clinics here & of the few times I’ve had to use them, I’ve never even seen them turn away a kid with a cold.
Yeah… but urgent-care and walk-in clinics require payment up-front. How many of your chronic ER abusers are going to do that?
I would like to just have a way of tracking/flagging these types of visits so that they can get a nice friendly letter to tell them to quit wasting tax payer money – i.e. c/c “hurt wrist”, duration “15 mins”, injury? “none”, have you tried any otc medication, ice or elevation? “no” – Take some ibuprofen and save the taxpayers $600 next time.
After tracking the wasteful visits, maybe we can send the info to the legislature and/or media to create public pressure for some real reform in the health care system.