UCSD Finds a Way to Link ERs and Community Clinics

The University of California-San Diego (UCSD) was named one of the nation’s 100 “Most Wired” this year by Hospitals and Health Networks magazine for successfully adopting health information technology to improve patient outcomes, streamline clinical practices and decrease medical errors. The health system’s advanced IT infrastructure uses multiple technologies to enhance and connect clinical systems.

“We are able to provide the highest level of patient safety and quality outcomes for the care we provide for our patients every day,” said Ed Babakanian, chief information officer, UC San Diego Medical Center. “We have integrated technology throughout the system in order to improve the accuracy of patient care. What is most important is how technology is used, not how much technology an organization has at its disposal.”

For example, IMPACT-ED (Improving Medical home and Primary care Access Through the Emergency Department)—a project of UC San Diego Medical Center, Alliance Healthcare Foundation and San Diego Family Care—electronically links the emergency room with local community clinics to expedite appointment scheduling for patients who do not have a medical home and need to be placed with a primary care provider for follow-up care.

UCSD physicians and staff are able to go online and schedule ED patients for a follow-up appointment, often for the next day, directly with a community clinic near the patient’s home. Patients are given appointment times and directions before leaving the hospital. By connecting these patients to community-based physicians, UCSD has been able to reduce costly and unnecessary ED visits and alleviate ED overcrowding.

Since the program’s launch in 2007, more than 1,270 low-income ED patients without medical homes have been given community clinic appointments. Data shows that these patients were ten times more likely to go to their clinic appointment than a patient simply referred to the clinic, with no appointment.