The Pennsylvania Healthcare Cost Containment Council reports that 3 percent of patients hospitalized in Pennsylvania in fiscal 2014 were “super-utilizers” — admitted five or more times in a year. Those 21,308 patients accounted for 11 percent of total admissions and 14 percent of hospital days. Those 21,308 patients accounted for 11 percent of total admissions and 14 percent of hospital days.
Michael Consuelos, senior vice president of clinical integration for the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the report was “no surprise for us folks who work in the quality improvement arena.”
The paper said: ”He said super-utilizers were often people with complex needs and limited access to primary and specialty care. The degree to which behavioral health was a factor was one of the more striking aspects of the report, he said. That illustrated the need to address the social determinants of health …{such as} poverty – and better coordination of mental and physical care.”
”Consuelos said some health systems were experimenting with putting mental-health and medical providers in the same office.”
