Broward Regional Health Planning Council Awarded Grant to Alleviate Avoidable Hospital Admissions by Marianne E. Murphy

Broward County emergency departments struggle with increasing volume and strained capacity due to avoidable admissions. These admissions create backlogs and delays in care, with wait times stretching many hours at a considerable cost burden to tax-assisted hospital facilities. To address this problem the Broward Regional Health Planning Council, Inc. (BRHPC) was awarded $310,000 by the Health Foundation of South Florida for a two year project to identify and reduce Broward County avoidable hospital inpatient admissions.

BRHPC is a not-for-profit agency established in 1982 under Florida Statutes to enhance client health status by assuming health planning, system coordination, community collaboration and health services implementation leadership. The Council will work collaboratively with Memorial Healthcare System, Broward Health, the Institute for Child Health Policy at Nova Southeastern University and NEX Consulting, LLC to examine inpatient avoidable admissions data and develop intervention strategies to decrease these admissions. The Institute for Child Health Policy will conduct the project evaluation and NEX Consulting, LLC are providing the software backend for the project.

According to Mike De Lucca, President and Chief Executive Officer of BRHPC, the Council's project will utilize the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Prevention Quality Indicators (PQIs), a set of measures that can be used with hospital inpatient discharge data to identify "ambulatory care sensitive conditions" (ACSCs) in adult populations. The PQIs will help the Council to identify avoidable admissions in Broward County, develop high-quality community based primary care interventions for ambulatory sensitive conditions, target resources and track programmatic and policy intervention impact.

ACSCs are conditions for which good outpatient care can potentially prevent the need for hospitalization, or for which early intervention can prevent complications or more severe disease. Some of the 14 ACSCs include asthma and diabetes. Renée Podolsky, Division Director for BRHPC said the PQIs will help identify what programs can be set up on a primary care level to reduce diabetes admissions in Broward County.

Michele Rosiere, Division Director for BRHPC, noted that the New York University Center for Health and Public Service Research algorithm that classifies ED utilization will be instrumental in the Council's ability to identify ED utilization as emergent or non-emergent and will be further able to classify these visits into mental health related, alcohol or substance abuse related, injury related or other.

To accomplish the enrollment process, Outreach Workers and Disease Managers will disperse into neighborhoods to help uninsured residents fill out eligibility forms for Medicaid and Medicare and secure preventive care in a primary care setting. Memorial Healthcare System (MHS) has initiated the Health Intervention with Targeted Services (HITS) Program. The goal is to improve the health status of targeted uninsured persons in South Broward County through identification, screening, outreach, eligibility assistance and linkage to a medical home. "By conducting this analysis and working with our partners we hope to improve the overall health of the residents of Broward County," said De Lucca.

Health Foundation of South Florida, a not-for-profit grant making foundation, is dedicated to expanding access to affordable, quality health care and providing funding that directly benefits the health and well being of underserved individuals in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe Counties. Since it’s inception in 1993, the Foundation awarded more than $67 million in grants and direct program support.

A detailed Guide to Prevention Quality Indicators, software and software documentation are available on the AHRQ Quality Indicators website at http://qualityindicators.ahrq.gov/pqi_download.htm.

For more information, contact Mike De Lucca, at (954) 561-9681 or mdelucca@brhpc.org or visit www.brhpc.org