In collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, Michigan University, and Ratgars University, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine's Specially Appointed Assistant Professor Atsushi Kaneko (currently a lecturer at Yokohama City University) "frequently visits emergency outpatients more than five times a year. We defined it as "the number of emergency outpatients" and investigated the ratio at secondary and tertiary emergency hospitals in Shizuoka prefecture.
“Frequent emergency outpatient visits” in which the same person visits the emergency outpatient department multiple times has become a global issue from the viewpoint of the burden on the emergency outpatient department and the increase in medical expenses.However, in Japan, reports on single facilities have been the main reports, and consideration of costs has not been sufficient.Therefore, with the cooperation of two hospitals in Shizuoka Prefecture, the research team investigated the proportion of frequent emergency outpatients and the differences in the characteristics of frequent emergency outpatients between the secondary and tertiary emergency hospitals. ..
According to the medical records of 2 people (3 cases) who visited one emergency outpatient department each in Shizuoka prefecture in one year, 1 people (1 cases) frequently visited the emergency outpatient department. ), About 20,388% of the examinees and 25,231% of the total number of examinations.The total medical expenses for these are 134 million yen, which accounts for 1,043% of the total medical expenses of the two hospitals.Age and welfare benefits were significant factors related to frequent emergency outpatient visits.
From the results of this survey, it was found that the proportion of frequent emergency outpatients and the proportion of medical expenses are smaller than those of previous studies in other countries.In the future, we plan to lead to research on whether this result tends to apply to other parts of Japan, and if so, why it is rare in Japan.In addition, in order to reduce the burden on both patients and medical institutions overseas, methods to appropriately reduce frequent emergency outpatient visits are being studied, and it is thought that similar research will be conducted in Japan.
