Sending patients to hospital tied to increased use of health care resources but no better outcomes
TUESDAY, June 14, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Most cases of hypertensive urgency can be safely managed in an outpatient setting, according to research published online June 13 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Krishna Patel, M.D., of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and colleagues analyzed office visits for 29,836 patients with hypertensive urgency.
The team found that emergency department referral was only necessary in a small minority (0.7 percent) of patients. And overall, patients referred to the emergency department and those sent home had similar rates of major adverse cardiovascular events within the next week, month, and year. Patients who were sent home had lower odds of needing admission to a hospital over the next week, compared to those who’d been sent to the emergency department. And while patients who were sent home were more likely to have uncontrolled hypertension one month later, this difference faded away by the six-month mark, Patel’s team said. Most still had uncontrolled hypertension months later, however.
Sending patients to the hospital “was associated with increased use of health care resources but not better outcomes,” the authors write.
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