About EDO Our Clientele EDO Costs

• Patients
• Hospitals
• ED Physician Practices
• Professional Liability Companies
• QIOs
• Payers

ED Physician Practice

ED physicians are financially impacted by EDO in a number of ways. First the number of patients being held for admission, extended work-ups for patients with increasingly chronic and debilitating diseases and the sheer volume of patients has virtually ground their workplace to a halt. This decreases productivity, RVUs and payment. In addition, crowded conditions create an unsafe environment by delaying diagnosis and treatment and this has led to the national recognition of the dwindling safety of patients treated in our EDs. This is leading to increased awards for malpractice and consequently increased premiums.

The odd fact is that the ED physicians have control over many of the causes of EDO but lack the insight and the tools to manage these contributing factors that they can control. These are delays in decision on disposition (parallel processing), over-ordering of unnecessary tests (cost-effective diagnostic testing) and assurance that the attending physician admits the patients to the appropriate level of inpatient care. The latter is one of the "gate keeping" functions that will reduce hospital denials, free up high level hospital resources and decrease holding patients for admission.

This element of the ED physician practice can be enhanced by an electronic decision support tool (ED Case Management Tool) that selects the appropriate level of care and prints out a report with the supporting clinical criteria to be reviewed before the admitting physician is called. The ED physician then "sells" the appropriate level of care to the admitting physician and manages the inpatient resources.