The American Hospital Association (AHA) recently released a toolkit to help hospitals and health systems reduce preventable inpatient admissions for ambulatory care sensitive conditions.
These conditions could be avoided with adequate primary care, such as asthma, low back pain and uncomplicated pneumonia. The toolkit includes resources from five national organizations that can help address the barriers to preventing such conditions, including a shortage of primary care physicians, ineffective communication between primary care physicians and those in subspecialties, and a lack of patient engagement.
An article published in the journal Annals of Family Medicine has been added to the clinician resources section of the toolkit. The article looks at hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions from the perspective of primary care physicians and suggests strategies to avoid the necessity of such admissions.
According to a 2013 AHA Physician Leadership Forum white paper, reducing preventable inpatient admissions for these conditions is one of five areas at which hospitals—in partnership with their clinical staff and patients—should look to reduce non-beneficial care through appropriate use of medical resources.
