How Home Health Providers Can Play A Greater Role In Reducing ED Visits

Home Health Care News | By Patrick Filbin

In order to reduce emergency department visits, home health care providers should be honing in on relationships with primary care providers and patients. 
 
That is the thesis of a new wide-ranging study conducted by researchers and clinicians at the University of Virginia Health. 
 
“The increasing number of home health referrals after ED use in order to improve the transition from hospital to home points to the role that home health care providers can and should play in communicating with PCPs,” Catherine Harris, director of Continuum Home Health at the University of Virginia, said at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice’s (NAHC) annual conference last month. “Providers should be playing a larger role in educating and assisting patients with fostering a strong PCP relationship for health maintenance and prevention.”
As a way to investigate home health care’s role in reducing unnecessary ED visits for seniors, Harris and her colleagues investigated the prevalence of ED utilization among a group of home health patients. 
 
The study reviewed 233 emergency department visits made by 195 home health patients and tried to pinpoint why patients made visits to the ED, whether or not those visits came before or after an in-home visit and if they had admitted themselves to the ED or if a home health aide recommended an ED visit. 
 
The study found that 130 of those patients visited the ED after hours, meaning those visits likely were costlier and less convenient for hospital staff and for the patient. Meanwhile, 149 patients had spent between 1 and 8 hours at the emergency department. 
 
“I have no doubt that our robust attempt to handle these calls and have our staff call the patient back is one of the reasons why so few of these were actually happening during office hours,” Harris said. “We found it fascinating that the vast majority,85, were in the ED for less than four hours — which speaks to the fact that they went in, they got turned around, they got dealt with for whatever that one issue was, and then they were sent back home.”
 
Of the 233 ED visits, 202 were sent home, while 30 were held for further observation. 

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