As cancer care providers work to identify ways to reduce costs while still providing high quality care, one expense has emerged as a potential area for savings: avoidable emergency visits and hospitalizations. Two innovative clinics at the forefront of value-based care have implemented Navigating Cancer’s triage software with symptom management pathways to deliver proactive care, manage side effects early and keep patients out of the hospital.
Both clinics were reporting positive impacts, but we wanted to determine if these methods were actually reducing costs.
To determine if these tactics were effective in reducing costs by preventing unnecessary emergency department visits and subsequent hospitalizations, we analyzed four months of triage data – including 6,419 tickets created by the care team as they managed patient calls. Using keywords like emergency, fever, sever, extreme and others, we determined that 2,217 of those tickets could have triggered an ED visit.
The result? Out of those there were 133 tickets where an office assessment or office intervention occurred, preventing a more costly intervention. We then annualized the savings based on the four months of actual ED visits that were avoided to quantify a savings of $3.3 million. Read a press release about the study.