Patterns of Emergency Care Utilization by Chronically Ill

Patients' visits to ER are hard to predict and control and the services incur high costs. We built an analytic framework to statistically quantify the relative utilization rates of emergency care resources by chronically ill. Analyzing Diabetes, Asthma, and Arthritis data, we found significant differences in utilization by patients covered with public and private insurance. Public plans have an opportunity to improve effectiveness and quality of chronic illness care if they follow protocols implemented by private insurance providers. Our approach can be straightforwardly extended towards comparative analyzes of utilization of healthcare resources beyond emergency care or chronic illness.