181 Hospital System Acute Care at Home to Prevent Emergency Department Visits

Abstract

Previously, the use of acute hospital-level care at home (hospital-at-home) for patients who are chronically ill has led to decreased medical costs, amount of sedentary time for patients, and hospital readmissions. Our large integrated health care system identified the need to develop a mechanism through which to prevent frequent emergency department (ED) visits in chronically ill patients and hospital admissions for patients requiring limited hospital resources. We addressed this by creating a home acute care program called Urgent Dispatch.