ACEP already had opted to strive to identify cost savings measures without compromising patient care. Three task forces were established in 2012 to work toward this idea – the Cost Effective Care Task Force, the Delivery System Reform Task Force, and the Transitions of Care Task Force.

ACEP’s Cost Effective Care Task Force is developing recommendations on ways to reduce costs in emergency care. Through member surveys, a Delphi approach, and use of the Emergency Medicine Practice Research Network (EMPRN), this group will not only consider unnecessary tests and procedures but also processes with emergency care that might represent meaningful cost savings while improving patient care. This task force is expected to complete its work and offer its report to ACEP’s Board in February 2013.

It is hoped that these reports of significant recommendations can fuel a public campaign and support health policy advocacy concerning how emergency physicians are not just making a list of tests to cut, but instead are looking at much larger initiatives, processes and transitions that could result in real health care savings while improving patient care.

The Delivery System Reform Task Force gave its report to the ACEP Board of Directors on Oct. 5. Find it online at www.acep.org/advocacy/federalissues/.

“The emergency department remains at least one of the reasonable solutions for addressing many of the health care system’s most vexing problems from a delivery system perspective,” the report states. “Emergency physicians are well positioned to provide innovation and leadership across the acute care continuum. Even from the perspective of employers, the patients, and payers, the allegedly high cost of care is incompletely characterized, often misconstrued, and lacks sufficient perspective in the broader context of community economics and the health care delivery system itself. Addressing these dynamics will require significant and intensive efforts to bring data, information, and solutions to a delivery system in rapid evolution.” In addition to efforts that should be continued, the report also lists several recommendations of efforts that should be started or enhanced, including information sharing to primary care providers (and specialists), care coordination for high-cost users, regionalization of patient care resources (mobile technology, telemedicine), cost effective alternatives to hospital admission, and others.

The report also recommends efforts that should be stopped or reduced (because emergency physicians are not trained or resourced for it, or could be more efficiently delivered in an alternative setting), such as longitudinal care for chronic illnesses, primary preventative care, non-value driven convenience care, and treatment of medical conditions that have no incremental benefit to the patient or value to the system.