Case: 1) Determine the costs of nonurgent care in the emergency department.

2) Why do the variety of services emergency department produce and the amount of overhead to be allocated make cost finding difficult.

3) Why was Morgan confident that cots could be reduced while quality could be improved? Is this conclusion supported in the literature?

4) Thinking as a consumer, what would constitute higher quality in the emergency department?

5) What options should the hospital consider? Why would you be confident that these options would incur lower costs than an emergency department? Do you think quality would be higher?

6) If the hospital creates one or more urgent care clinics and adds evening and weekend hours to its primary care clinics, what will happen to emergency department volumes? What effect wills that have on emergency department costs?

http://ache.org/pdf/secure/gifts/November09-Lee.pdf