Repeat Offenders

Check out this news story! It is old, but I just remembered it. It details how 9 people accounted for 2700 ER visits in the Austin, TX area over a six year period. I am sure that we have some similar people at our hospital, and I aim to find out. I know a few names and I'm going to ask my attendings for a few more and see if I can find similar results. I will let you know. I think we only have EMR back 5 or 6 years from right now, but should be enough to see the big offenders, and it shouldn't be hard to think of who they are. I'm not sure if we have people that are THAT bad, that averages out to 300 visits per person, and this article talks about visits to all area hospitals total, while I only have access to our records, but I think the numbers will still be impressive. http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/01/0401er.html