Emergency Department Utilization: Update On Assumed Savings From Best Practices Implementation

On March 20, 2014, Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA) published a report to legislature re-examining Medicaid utilization data to identify the costs and trends for emergency department visits following implementation of the Seven Best Practices program. This report follows on an earlier preliminary report released in January, 2013 that tentatively identified favorable utilization and cost trends but there was insufficient data to draw any definitive conclusions. HCA now finds that savings were achieved through reductions to the Health Care Authority budget, with an estimated annual savings for state fiscal year 2013 of $33,650,000. While HCA does . . .