Better Care, Same Cost — Reducing Unplanned Care for Multi-visit Patients: A Payer-Provider Model

Importance

Many interventions implemented for multi-visit patients (MVP) have been developed to address patient-centric needs of these individuals and reduce unplanned care for ambulatory-sensitive conditions. More rigorous research is needed to better understand the impact of these interventions on changes in care utilization including unplanned care.

Objective

To evaluate the impact of the Enhanced Care Program (ECP), a payer-provider collaborative model, on unplanned care use and cost of care.

Design

Using propensity methods, a comparison group was constructed using insurer membership files. Comparisons were performed using a difference-in-differences analysis.

Participants

Patients enrolled in ECP through December 2019 were considered eligible for the study (n = 357). All patients had five or more ED visits in the past year or two or more inpatient hospitalizations in the past year prior to enrollment.

Exposures

ECP is a high-intensity outpatient intervention intended to reduce avoidable unplanned care such as ED visits and inpatient hospital stays through home visits, chronic/acute disease management, and intensive care coordination.

Main Measures

The primary outcomes of interest were events per 100 members per year of ED use with return to home, unplanned inpatient and observational status admissions, and unplanned behavioral health inpatient admission, and cost of care per member per month.

Key Results

Overall total unplanned care encounters were significantly reduced with a difference-in-difference of 320 unplanned care encounters per 100 members per year in the intervention group (p < 0.05). The ECP group showed statistically significant decreases in costs of unplanned ED, unplanned observation admission, and unplanned inpatient behavioral medicine costs, but statistically significant increases in overall pharmacy costs and lab costs. Changes in total costs of care for the ECP group were not statistically different than the control group (p = 0.55).

Conclusions

ECP showed significant reduction of unplanned care for MVP patients.