New emergency department program enables patients to recover at home safely
Penn Medicine established a program to improve support for patients after emergency department visits, helping them recover at home instead of the hospital.
A new service piloted at Penn Medicine allowed a proportion of patients to avoid hospitalization by providing them with greater support after visiting the emergency department. The vast majority of the patients enrolled in the service—nearly 9 out of 10—did not need to return to the hospital for care in the month that followed their initial visit. The study was published in
“The culture is shifting where we realize that hospitalization is not always the best option for patients—particularly patients with chronic illness,” says one of the study’s lead authors, Austin Kilaru,