Main description:

Access to acute and emergency care is essential when we are ill or injured, but the costs are significant. How can we make services more efficient and effective? This thought-provoking text provides twenty case studies detailing successful innovations to enhance value, including telehealth, observation medicine, high utilizer programs, and the use of informatics to improve clinical decision support. A detailed history of system developments over the last fifty years in the US and internationally is provided, and subjects including measurement and quality improvement, volume versus value based care, and emergency department crowding are discussed. This book is an ideal way for emergency physicians and healthcare managers to explore new ideas and enhance the quality of care in their area.

Contents:

1. Fifty years of transformation of acute and emergency care Benjamin Easter; 2. Measuring and improving quality of care Jesse M. Pines, Mark S. Zocchi, C. Noelle Dietrich and Molly Benoit; 3. Fragmentation in acute and emergency care: causes, consequences and solutions Benjamin Easter and Arjun Venkatesh; 4. Alternative payment models in acute, episodic care: moving from volume to value Nir J. Harish and Jesse M. Pines; 5. Improving timeliness and access of acute and emergency care: the science of improving emergency department crowding Olan A. Soremekun; 6. Bringing the patient-voice into emergency care Marc A. Probst and Erik P. Hess; Case study 1. Expanding the role of observation care Christopher W. Baugh, Christopher Caspers and Anthony M. Napoli; Case study 2. An innovative strategy to streamline care for behavioral health in the emergency department Michael Turturro, Leslie Zun and Jack Rozel; Case study 3. The geriatric emergency department Ula Hwang and Christopher R. Carpenter; Case study 4. How the UK responded to the 4-hour rule Suzanne Mason and Michael J. Schull; Case study 5. High-cost users: using information technology to streamline care plans Dawn Williamson and Jody A. Vogel; Case study 6. Emergency care in an integrated healthcare delivery system: the Kaiser experience Dana R. Sax, Jeffrey S. Selevan and Wm. Wesley Fields; Case study 7. Urgent care centers: an alternative to unscheduled primary care and emergency department care Judd E. Hollander and Jesse M. Pines; Case study 8. The 'no-wait' emergency department Chris McStay and Jody Crane; Case study 9. Transforming care delivery through telemedicine Judd E. Hollander and Brendan G. Carr; Case study 10. Coordinating emergency care through telemedicine Sarah A. Sterling, Kristi Henderson and Alan E. Jones; Case study 11. Bringing diagnostic testing to the bedside: point of care testing Benjamin Easter and Kelly Bookman; Case study 12. Regionalization of care M. Kit Delgado, Fred Lin and Brendan G. Carr; Case study 13. Clinical decision support tools Kelly Bookman and Ali S. Raja; Case study 14. Automated patient follow-up program Tom Scaletta, Kristin L. Rising and Megan Ranney; Case study 15. Using data on patient experience to improve clinical care Seth Glickman and Abhi Mehrotra; Case study 16. Community paramedicine: the Geisinger experience Manish N. Shah and David J. Schoenwetter; Case study 17. Initiating palliative care in the emergency department Christian Jacobus and Tammie E. Quest; Case study 18. Streamlining patient flow in the emergency department with discrete event simulation Eric J. Goldlust, T. Eugene Day and Nathan R. Hoot; Case study 19. Using emergency department community health workers as a bridge to ongoing care for frequent ED users Roberta Capp and Richard Zane; Case study 20. Big data: use of analytics for operations management Joe Guarisco and James Langabeer II.