Evaluating the Effectiveness of Community and Hospital Medical Record Integration on Management of Behavioral Health in the Emergency Department

This study evaluated the correlation of an emergency department embedded care coordinator with access to community and medical records in decreasing hospital and emergency department use in patients with behavioral health issues. This retrospective cohort study presents a 6-month pre-post analysis on patients seen by the care coordinator (n=524). Looking at all-cause healthcare utilization, care coordination was associated with a significant median decrease of one emergency department visit per patient (p < 0.001) and a decrease of 9.5 h in emergency department length of stay per average visit per patient (p<0.001). There was no significant effect on the number of hospitalizations or hospital length of stay. This intervention demonstrated a correlation with reducing emergency department use in patients with behavioral health issues, but no correlation with reducing hospital utilization. This under-researched approach of integrating medical records at point-of-care could serve as a model for better emergency department management of behavioral health patients.