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“Oregon has been a leader in measuring our progress in treating asthma. We need systems that measure and support interventions in every clinic if we want to be successful in treating asthma”.
Nancy Clarke
Executive Director
Oregon Health Care
Quality Corporation
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Asthma Care in Oregon - What have we learned?
An inside look at data from 2001-2005
Emergency Department (ED) Visits and Follow-up Outpatient Care
The percentage of people with asthma who have an ED visit for asthma in a year is not trivial. As seen in Figure 2, of people with asthma, 5-7% of those with commercial health insurance and 13-16% of those served by the OHP had an ED visit for asthma in 2005. As Figure 2 also makes clear, OHP members are 2-3 times as likely to have an ED visit for asthma as people with commercial insurance. Moreover, the ED visit rate slowly decreased from 2001 to 2005 for people with commercial insurance but is holding steady for OHP members.
Because an ED visit for asthma indicates that a person’s asthma is out of control, the Guide recommends that people receive a follow-up outpatient visit within one month of an ED visit for asthma. Figure 3 indicates that from 2001-2005, only 34-44% of people with an ED visit for asthma had a follow-up outpatient visit within one month. This indicator has been stable over the past five years and does not appear to depend on the type of healthcare coverage.
 
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