Hospital Highlights

Hospital makes changes

in emergency

department

Patients who arrive at our emergency department (ED) on the weekend, will now see new faces. We have changed from a large, national company that provided physicians from various locations to a small regional group, most of whom have worked at Providence Holy Family Hospital in Spokane. All are board certified in emergency medicine.

Our weekend coverage is complemented by our weekday coverage provided by Whitman Medical Group. I am confident patients will receive safe and excellent quality care and be treated with compassion and respect.

Driven by the state’s need to reduce Medicaid expenses, we will provide education to patients about the appropriate use of the emergency department. The initiative is expected to reduce Washington state Medicaid expenses $31.2 million by implementing seven best practices for ED care.

If we are unable to reduce the cost of care using the best practices, Medicaid will likely revert to more strenuous retrospective review and denial of payments. The project targets those patients with five or more visits in a year. Choosing the appropriate care setting can impact everyone’s costs – from helping to control the rate of insurance premium increases to individual out-of-pocket costs.

Most ED visits require a much higher out of pocket than an urgent care or primary care provider visit and some reimburse a percentage of overall charges after a hefty co-pay.

We currently have most of the best practices in place and expect to be fully implemented by June 15. The best practices include use of an electronic medical record, use of evidence-based guidelines for narcotic prescribing, reporting and monitoring, additional follow-up for those with five or more visits, and patient education. Since these are best practices, we will be using them for all of our patients.

Patients can expect to be provided with information on their visit and alternatives to the ED if their condition could have been provided in a different setting. The intent is to inform everyone about alternatives so that we can all contribute to reducing the overall cost.

Debbie Glass, CEO

Whitman Hospital & Medical Center