Most people don’t go to their doctor – much less the emergency room – five times a year.
The ER is the most expensive possible way to get health treatment. It’s designed for the most serious possible injuries and illnesses, not routine health care.
So it’s huge news that ER visits are down 10 percent in Washington state, despite a growing population.
This didn’t happen by accident.
A report by the state’s Health Care Authority says after lawmakers, doctors and hospitals came together after the passage of a law, they pinpointed ways to cut down on ER visits for what really aren’t emergencies. Docs, nurses and health care professionals call them “frequent fliers.”
Fewer ER visits saves money for everybody and also improves the quality of care, because it lets ER doctors and nurses focus on people coming in with broken bones and heart attacks.
Here’s the money quote from Jordan Schrader’s story in The News Tribune:
“A 10 percent reduction is almost unprecedented,” said former state Sen. Nathan Schlicher, an emergency-room doctor at St. Joseph Medical Center who helped organize the program.
The report also found a 10.7 percent decrease in the number of “frequent fliers” who visited five or more times a year.
Some of those frequent fliers kept coming to ER’s because they didn’t have health coverage and that was the only way they could get treatment. The solution? Get them on health insurance, because a single visit to the ER costs more than an entire year’s worth of health insurance premiums.
Other frequent fliers are doctor shopping for prescription painkillers. They’ll go from ER to ER complaining about pain until somebody writes them a prescription for serious painkillers, which they abuse. Then they come back looking to score again.
To stop that cycle, hospitals are linking up electronically to see who’s making those requests and flagging those who seem to be doctor shopping for painkillers.
After years of skyrocketing health care costs, any trend toward lower costs is newsworthy and notable.
