San Diego, CA USA (UroToday.com) In the United States, unnecessary repeat imaging is a prevalent example of wasteful healthcare spending, possibly caused by ineffective information sharing between care providers. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, the authors examined whether a change in emergency department (ED) during an acute kidney stone episode correlates with secondary, duplicate imaging.
MarketScan’s Commercial Claims and Encounters Database was analyzed for this study. Patients that received CT imaging with diagnosis of kidney stones on their first ED visit were analyzed. Among these patients, those with ED revisits in the 30 days following initial visit were selected, and further split between revisits to the same or different ED.
After review, 12% of the patients with CT imaging on first ED visit returned to the ED within 30 days. Across the board, 40% of patients with revisit to the ED had a duplicate CT scan performed. Further, a patient was 20% more likely to receive a duplicate CT if the revisit was made to a different ED. In conclusion, these findings highlight the need for better healthcare information exchange, in order to limit unnecessary duplicate imaging.
Presented By: Parth K. Shah, MD
Written By: Austin Drysch; Department of Urology, University of California, Irvine at the 2016 AUA Annual Meeting - May 6 - 10, 2016 – San Diego, California, USA