'Medical Homes' for Asthmatics Reduced ER Visits, Hospital Admissions
Researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston set out to determine if a sustained effort to provide families with better care through a patient centered medical home approach – similar to the efforts being used by primary care practices in southeastern Pennsylvania and across the state – would reduce emergency room visits and hospital admissions. Hospital admissions and ER visits decreased by 62 percent, after two years of the intervention.
Asthma is a major cause of avoidable hospital admissions and ER visits in children, particularly those from poor communities. In addition to the burden on the children and their families, such preventable complications of chronic illness are major cost drivers adding to the nation's more than $2 trillion in health spending.
Researchers from Children's Hospital Boston set out to determine if a sustained effort to provide families with better care through a patient centered medical home approach – similar to the efforts being used by primary care practices in southeastern Pennsylvania and across the state – would reduce emergency room visits and hospital admissions.
"As part of a quality improvement initiative, we established a patient-centered asthma medical home within our Primary Care Clinic," said the researchers, who presented the results of the two year study Saturday at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The researchers used a computer registry developed to identify and track asthmatic patients. The study's 1,900 patients attended education sessions where they were taught about asthma, as well as appropriate medication use, what environmental factors can trigger an asthma episode, and how to recognize and manage an asthma attack.
Hospital admissions and ER visits decreased by 62 percent after two years.
"Creating asthma medical homes with the goal of coordinating patient care through easily accessible and integrated clinical, educational and community resources has tremendous potential for effectively improving asthma outcomes," the researchers concluded.