SEPTEMBER - 202119REDUCING Dr. Angela Turalba, Chief of Ophthalmology, Atrius HealthByEfforts to minimize unnecessary emergency department (ED) visits remain a priority across the healthcare landscape. Unnecessary visits to EDs place undue burden on our health care system while increasing costs and delaying care for patients. Viable strategies to alleviate this burden and decompress EDs include steering patients with non-emergent issues to the outpatient setting; however, same-day access to outpatient care is not always available, and in many cases poses an additional barrier to care. These barriers are particularly prevalent in ophthalmology, necessitating a multi-pronged approach to keep eye patients out of the ED.Almost half of all ED visits for patients with eye complaints are not emergencies and can be managed in the outpatient setting. Issues like conjunctivitis, a common condition, is often treated in the ED despite its ability to be easily diagnosed and treated in the ambulatory environment. Other common but more serious eye complaints often find their way to the ED, such as uveitis (inflammation inside the eye) or sudden vision loss -- despite many EDs lacking the optimal equipment, specialized resources and personnel to diagnose and manage these conditions. This, coupled with the increasing demand for ophthalmic care due to the rise in age-related chronic eye conditions such as glaucoma, macular degeneration and diabetes, leads to a back-up of non-emergent eye-related diagnoses taking place in the ED. This then leads to a delay in care and treatment for patients seeking immediate eye care. At Johns Hopkins, a project was initiated to remedy this problem with a department policy that provided increased same-day access in their ophthalmology clinics. ED VISITS OF OPHTHALMIC PATIENTS CXO Insights
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