ED physicians key to half of hospital admissions

John Commins, for HealthLeaders Media, May 21, 2013

Doctors in the emergency department are the major decision makers in nearly half of all hospital admissions, giving them a significant role in controlling healthcare costs, research shows.

Jay A. Kaplan, MD, has been an emergency physician for more than 30 years and over the decades he has witnessed firsthand what he says is the evolving role of the emergency department in providing frontline healthcare.

"When I first started practicing we called it the emergency room," Kaplan says. "Then we got called the emergency department. We have morphed again. We are no longer an emergency department. We are an emergency care and acute diagnostic center."

Kaplan, a board member with the American College of Emergency Physicians, points to a Rand Corporation study commissioned by the Emergency Physician Action Fund which shows that emergency physicians are key decision makers for nearly half of all hospital admissions. Because of that, Kaplan says, emergency physicians are playing a critical role in controlling healthcare costs.

RAND found that hospital admissions from the ED increased 17% over seven years, accounting for nearly all the growth in hospital admissions between 2003 and 2009, offset by a 10% drop in admissions from primary care physicians and clinical referrals. Nearly all of the increase was from "non-elective" admissions from the ED—a rate 3.8 times the rate of population growth.

Read the full article atHealthLeaders Media.