Identifying characteristics of patients with low urgency emergency department visits in a managed care setting.

PURPOSE: Studies worldwide in emergency departments (ED) find that a substantial proportion of patients seek care for non-urgent conditions. Managed care programs may help address this overuse of ED facilities, but non-urgent ED care is not easily identified outside of ED settings. This article employed an algorithm using insurance data to identify and characterize patients having low urgency ED visits. Non-urgentis the term used in the ED literature for ED visits that might have been managed outside an ED setting such as in a physician office. Low urgency ED visits could include visits that require an ED setting but for less severe conditions than high urgency ED visits. DESIGN: Analysis of ED visits by members of the largest health insurer in Hawaii. METHODOLOGY: Visits were defined as low urgency if classified by the ED as low severity and if, in addition, the patients required no procedures beyond physician and nursing care. A simple example would be a physician order for a laboratory test. Even if the test was routine, the fact the doctor ordered the test during the ED visit suggests the result might be needed right away to make a management decision. Another example of a procedure would be a radiograph. PRINCIPAL FINDING: Medicaid participants, children age 1 to 5, and people living on less populated Hawaiian Islands most frequently had low urgency visits. The visits were also more common on weekends than weekdays, and more common among males compared to females. Of all low urgency visits by Medicaid participants, 32% were by repeat users of the ED. The percentage for members of non-Medicaid plans was 16%. People with one low urgency visit in the past year were more than twice as likely as others to have a similar visit in the next year. People with two or more low urgency visits in the past year were five times as likely to have a low urgency ED visit in the next year. CONCLUSION: The results identify several areas such as youth, island of residence, and past history of low urgency ED visits that might become the focus of managed care programs.

Factors affecting the influenza vaccination of high risk adults in Hawai'i.

Influenza infections cause a substantial toll in respiratory infections, hospitalizations, and death; and immunization has proven effective in reducing these outcomes. This article describes a study to understand variations in influenza vaccination rates for a population ages 50 and older using data from a large insurer in Hawai'i. Vaccination rates were lower in adults without than with a chronic disease, and especially low in those without chronic disease of ages 50-64. People who had been vaccinated in the past year were likely to become vaccinated again, and people with a history of regular physician visits were more likely than others to become vaccinated. Having vaccine available at the worksite led to improved vaccination rates. By ethnicity Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese were most likely to obtain influenza vaccinations; the greatest ethnic differences occurred among adults ages 50 to 64 without a chronic disease. People seeing a physician during the influenza season were especially likely to become vaccinated during the week of the visit. Patients were more likely to become vaccinated by an existing physician than if seeing a new one. The percentage of office visits in weeks in which patients became vaccinated varied four-fold by physician specialty Internal medicine and family medicine physicians had the highest percentages whereas gynecologists and cardiologists had the lowest. The results suggest multiple reasons that high risk adults may fail to become vaccinated. Better understanding barriers may lead to improved strategies to improve influenza vaccination rates.

Major depression associated with rates of cardiovascular disease state transitions.

OBJECTIVE: To compare patients with and without major depression with respect to their rates of transition to several stages of cardiovascular disease progression. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective observational study. METHODS: The study used administrative data from a large insurer in Hawaii to evaluate associations of major depression with cardiovascular progression. Analyses used competing-risks models, models that allow more than 1 type of possible outcome event at the transition stages. All analyses were adjusted for age and sex. RESULTS: Among nearly 600,000 healthy members, those with major depression in the past year were 50% to 100% more likely than controls to develop hypertension or dyslipidemia. Rates were increased to a similar magnitude (1) among patients with hypertension or dyslipidemia who subsequently developed either the other condition or coronary artery disease and (2) among patients with hypertension and dyslipidemia who developed coronary artery disease or congestive heart failure. Transition rates to coronary artery disease or congestive heart failure also were increased 50% to 100% among patients with diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia. The sequence of associations remained as strong examining depression 1-2 years in the past as with depression in the past year. CONCLUSIONS: The results show a pattern of faster transitions for patients with major depression compared with patients without major depression across both the early and later stages of cardiovascular progression. Health plans offer a setting where patients with depression can be identified and where interventions might be undertaken to minimize the possible effects of depression on transition rates.