There are few proven strategies to reduce the frequency of potentially preventable hospitalizations and Emergency Department (ED) visits. To facilitate strategy development, we documented these events among complex patients and the factors that contribute to them in a large care-improvement initiative.
Observational study with retrospective audits and selective interviews by the patients' care managers among 12 diverse medical groups in California, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington that participated in an initiative to implement collaborative care for patients with both depression and either uncontrolled diabetes, uncontrolled hypertension, or both. We reviewed information about 373 adult patients with the required conditions who belonged to these medical groups and had experienced 389 hospitalizations or ED visits during the 12-month study period from March 30, 2014, through March 29, 2015. The main outcome measures were potentially preventable hospitalizations or ED visit events.
Of the studied events, 28% were considered to be potentially preventable (39% of ED visits and 14% of hospitalizations) and 4.6% of patients had 40% of events. Only type of insurance coverage; patient lack of resources, caretakers, or understanding of care; and inability to access clinic care were more frequent in those with potentially preventable events. Neither disease control nor ambulatory care-sensitive conditions were associated with potentially preventable events.
Among these complex patients, patient characteristics, disease control, and the presence of ambulatory care-sensitive conditions were not associated with likelihood of ED visits or hospital admissions, including those considered to be potentially preventable. The current focus on using ambulatory care-sensitive conditions as a proxy for potentially preventable events needs further evaluation.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 32. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 August 2025.
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#1,514,042
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#87
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#24,743
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#2
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Altmetric has tracked 32,683,917 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,221 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 17.6. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
