Michigan Emergency Department Leader Attitudes Toward and Experiences With Clinical Pathways to Guide Admission Decisions: A Mixed‐methods Study

Abstract

Potential solutions to help avoid hospitalization from the ED include multidisciplinary clinical care pathways. Successful pathways emerged from bringing stakeholders from the ED, hospital, and health care community together. Additionally, emergency providers need systems and supports in place to help their patients navigate follow-up care in a timely fashion.

Baseline Performance of Real-World Clinical Practice Within a Statewide Emergency Medicine Quality Network: The Michigan Emergency Department Improvement Collaborative (MEDIC)

“…Finally, MEDIC is simultaneously engaged in a quality initiative called the Program on Alternatives to Hospitalization, which facilitates the creation, development, and dissemination of clinical care pathways to provide alternatives to admission from the ED. 23 Although most but not all of MEDIC's current quality initiatives focus on diagnostic imaging decisions in the ED, this portfolio addresses 3 of the 6 domains of health care quality as defined by the National Academy of Medicine, including safety, effectiveness, and efficiency. 24 MEDIC's approach to stipulating these measure specifications was tied to several considerations, including feasibility of data collection, existing models of measurement, communication of reporting, influence on provider behavior to be incentivized, and review of the literature.…”