Improving Outpatient Follow-Up Through Innovative Appointment Scheduling at Emergency Department Discharge

This quality improvement (QI) project evaluates a comprehensive, patient-centered plan to reduce the emergency department (ED) revisit rate by improving outpatient follow-up after initial ED visits. Patients with low-acuity complaints discharged from the ED are often instructed to schedule a follow-up appointment with their primary care team or a specialty service after leaving the ED. In this QI project, patients either had a follow-up visit scheduled at the time of ED discharge or received a phone call within 2 days of discharge to schedule outpatient follow-up visit. The number of ED visits per patient was significantly reduced following implementation of scheduling at the time of ED discharge.