Many seniors' ER visits, hospital admissions preventable

Greenbeard

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Jun 20, 2010
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The experts that advise Congress on Medicare policy, MedPAC, had some some new data (from 20006-08) on seniors' emergency room visits and hospital admissions to chew over when they met on Friday.

Lots of room for improvement across the system.

Study: Most Seniors’ ER Visits Could Be Avoided – Capsules - The KHN Blog
Nearly 60 percent of Medicare beneficiary visits to emergency rooms and 25 percent of their hospital admissions were “potentially preventable”– had patients received better care at home or in outpatient settings — according to results of a study released Friday by a congressional advisory board.

“These are spectacular rates,” said Scott Armstrong, a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and CEO of Group Health Cooperative, a Seattle-based health plan.

The commission’s preliminary study, released at their monthly meeting, found the most common diagnosis for preventable ER visits was upper respiratory infections. The most common diagnosis for preventable hospital admissions was congestive heart failure.

The potentially preventable admissions or ER visits do not indicate the hospital acted inappropriately. Instead, they are a measure of a community’s outpatient care system that includes private physician offices, community health centers and urgent care centers, study co-author Nancy Ray, a MedPAC principal policy analyst, told commissioners. Ray said not every preventable ER visit or admission can be avoided. The study showed wide variation of these rates across the country and within cities.

Patients could avoid preventable ER visits by having health conditions treated by family doctors or urgent care centers or by making sure to take all their medicine. Hospital admissions could be prevented if conditions such as asthma, diabetes or heart failure were better monitored by patients and their doctors, commission staff said.
 
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This isn't just seniors.....

And it isn't like it's the systems fault. We let seniors have as much access to as much care as they want. And because they don't pay for it, they abuse it.

I hear of all kinds of abuse by people.....get lonely....go see your doctor.
 

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