In Alameda County, A Big Data Effort To Prevent Frequent ER Visits

The University of Benin Teaching Hospital implemented an Electronic Medical Records system in 2011 that has now been deployed across more than 75% of its services. The system digitally links all hospital departments, including registration, clinics, laboratories and pharmacies, allowing patient information to flow electronically rather than through physical file transfers, preventing medical records from being lost or misfiled as they were in the paper-based system.

In collaboration with Intuitive Health, UF Health has opened three centers that offer both ER and urgent care 24/7, at the same facility so patients don’t have to decide themselves which care they need. Instead, doctors at the center make that decision and then the system bills the patient accordingly. This helps them avoid taking on expensive ER bills when that level of care may not have been necessary.

Victims of violence that end up in the emergency room can return within two years with more injuries because of retaliation efforts. Philadelphia’s Healing Hurt People is a hospital-based violence intervention program that assists individuals who need medical care and mental health services. The hospital and social work collaboration helps reduce emergency room costs.

Victims of violence found in hospitals are more likely to return for emergency care than those with chronic illnesses. As a result, communities like Cleveland, Ohio are trying the approach of treating violence as a public health issue. By employing social workers and peer mentors for the victims while being treated, it is hoped that the cycle of violence can be interrupted and the root cause addressed.

One challenge of the United States’ health care system involves keeping costs down while simultaneously improving the level of quality care. Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles has adopted electronic medical records in accordance with the Choosing Wisely campaign, which offers guidelines on different tests and treatments to reduce wasteful or harmful ones for patients. The electronic medical records have helped doctors by alerting which prescriptions to avoid, and have overall reduced health care costs by $4 million.

The United States health care system is expensive and enables doctors to prescribe costly brand name medication instead of generic versions. Sutter Health assembles its doctors a few times a week to review with electronic records the prescribing of brand name drugs and the necessity of procedures as an effort to reduce health care costs and to reduce unnecessary tests. In two years, the initiative has saved $30 million.

RiverAware, an app that uses real-time data from a national network of gauges, has helped citizens, first responders, floodplain managers, scientists, and recreational users such as paddlers and anglers access river-flow data, informing or alerting communities as to when it's time to evacuate or seek higher ground. The data is aggregated from more than 13,000 stream-gauging stations around the country maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Weather Service.

Healthcare providers are using an approach called Communication and Optimal Resolution to acknowledge medical errors and work towards a solution with open communication instead of through court hearings.

Douglas County in Nebraska is so far the only county to record the race and ethnicity of anyone who tests positive for COVID-19, and that's due in large part to how the Douglas County Health Department has been conducting their outreach. To make sure they are equitably supplying resources, information, and testing, the department hired a team of people to interview anyone who called in with symptoms, and then adds those details to a contact tracing map that better shows where their blind spots have been.

Low-code applications assist in modernizing governmental software systems. A development platform that allows people who have little coding experience to easily digitize processes has allowed New Orleans and the Orleans Parish Communication District to streamline their 911 and 311 services, allowing citizens to track information and engage with government agencies more transparently.