Reducing Avoidable ED Utilization with ED Optimization

The Challenge

Sutter Health, a not-for-profit health network in Northern California, is dedicated to the communities it serves, investing and partnering with local programs to ensure access to care and social services.

High emergency department (ED) utilization has been an issue in Northern California, and Sutter Health’s system often experienced unnecessary patient encounters. Their EHR contained overwhelming amounts of hard-to-find information with limited clinical insights. In addition, they had poor visibility into patient history and encounters at other EDs. They understood that improved insights would give them an opportunity to drive better patient care.

Dr. Ronn Berrol, Medical Director for Emergency Services at Sutter Health Alta Bates, explains his staff’s experience with researching the EHR documentation for details: “You’ll see there are forty entries,” he notes. “And if you open each one of them up, there’s no clinical information. It just has the patient’s address in it and a date of a visit. So, you’re filtering through forty visits trying to find information that’s useful. In the emergency department, nobody has that level of time.”

Berrol also observes that even with clinical insight, “There might be 60 or 70 visits that really don’t say anything. There’s a summary document, or there’s a behavioral health note, which says the patient never showed up for a visit, but yet there’s an entry there for a PCP visit. Or there were just labs. There was a callback history. None of those are really things that enrich my understanding of the patient.”

The Solution

ED Optimization from PointClickCare sends real-time alerts directly into the ED track board within seconds of the patient registering in the ED. These alerts summarize actionable insights on recent ED encounters in their facility or others, whether in or out of their hospital network, and also include patient risk highlights, current care plans, medications and other clinical data. Specific insights can also highlight mental and behavioral health challenges as well as safety and security events that can signal other precautions that should be considered for that patient.

Having more complete and collaborative information from across settings immediately delivered at the point of care reduces manual searches for patient history that may not be easily summarized or available in the EHR. More patient data at the bedside reduces medical uncertainty and enables faster triage and treatment and can also support guiding more appropriate care options for complex or high-needs patients that perhaps do not require emergency attention.

The Outcome

Sutter Health has seen a significant reduction in ED utilization and length of stay following implementation of ED Optimization. With improved understanding of high-risk patients, Sutter’s staff was able to easily pinpoint interventions that would lead to better outcomes, reducing costs at the same time. “If you have one difficult patient with an extended admission that you can prevent, it will probably pay for this tool for the entire year,” explains Berrol.

He notes that with ED Optimization, “You’re going to get a richer and deeper understanding of your patient population than you had before. We all have an assumption we know our population, but until you start to look at it in these new ways, you don’t realize what you were leaving on the table, or maybe what you should have been looking at but didn’t have access to.”

That deeper understanding often includes visibility into risk factors that can lead to unsafe working conditions. “In the environment we’re working in, with workplace violence and personal safety, anytime you can make someone feel that they can take a sense of control back, that’s a very helpful thing.” Berrol shares. “Not easily measured, but it leads to better enjoyment of work and satisfaction and productivity.”

Learn More

If you’re interested in implementing ED Optimization to help your organization achieve results like those experienced by Sutter Health, contact our team for more details.