Prioritize chronic care resources across inpatient service lines
January 26, 2012
Prevalence rates of many chronic conditions continue to rise, and inpatient medical services for patients with chronic disease, if not checked by improved care, might crowd out more profitable surgical cases as growth of medical admissions is projected to outpace growth of surgeries across the next 10 years.
As health systems increasingly dedicate resources to treating chronic conditions—in both hospital and ambulatory settings—optimizing use of those resources will be critical given the cost-intensive nature of chronic care and relative lack of reimbursement. Accordingly, organizations must identify opportunities for care improvement and prioritize use of resources across those opportunities.
Although service lines have not traditionally prioritized treatment of chronic disease, much of the legwork for improving care for chronic conditions will fall to these organizational units. The burden of chronic disease cuts across all service lines, albeit at varying penetration rates. Effectively mobilizing service lines to care for patients with chronic conditions will require a deeper understanding of the reach of various conditions across individual service lines.
Get market-level estimates of chronic care utilization
To aid planners and service line leaders in identifying the service line-level impact of chronic disease and the potential effect on inpatient volumes that might result from improved care, the Marketing and Planning Leadership Council recently released the Chronic Condition Inpatient Estimator. This tool offers a snapshot of inpatient service utilization by patients with chronic diseases, providing estimates for the number and percentage of inpatient cases attributable to this patient population across service lines.
A closer look at national data
Analysis of the data helps target chronic disease interventions. Looking at the national-level data, for example, one-third of total inpatient cardiac services volumes are provided to patients with diabetes. Therefore, hospitals working to improve care for diabetic patients might prioritize collaboration with cardiologists and cardiac service line leaders to maximize the effectiveness of their efforts.
In addition, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) unsurprisingly comprise over a third of pulmonology discharges while also representing nearly one-fifth of inpatient utilization for arterial disease services. Hospitals may find efforts to improve inpatient care for COPD patients to be beneficial within both pulmonology and arterial disease services.
Other examples of potential connections include high utilization of cardiac and vascular services by patients with chronic kidney disease and high utilization of endocrinology and gastroenterology services by patients with depression. Organizations can map additional chronic disease patterns across service lines through this type of utilization analysis.
Access the tool
Marketing and Planning Leadership Council members can access the Chronic Condition Inpatient Estimator to get market-level estimates of inpatient utilization by patients with chronic diseases. The tool allows users to analyze utilization at service line, sub-service line, and individual procedure levels. Not a member of the Marketing and Planning Leadership Council? Learn more on our website.
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