Can Trips to the ER Be Reduced?

• Position: DIABETES

Ten percent of the U.S. population has diabetes, a potentially fatal, long-lasting health condition that affects how the body turns food into energy. Although many people are able to manage their symptoms and avoid hospital care, certain individual and place-based factors can affect diabetes management, which may lead to costly emergency department visits and hospitalizations.

"In an ideal health care system, people should be able to readily access outpatient care to get their illness under control earlier, as opposed to seeking care at an emergency department," says Alva O. Ferdinand, assistant professor at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health and director of the Southwest Rural Health Research Center.

Ferdinand and colleagues investigated which individual and place-based factors most significantly affect the likelihood of seeking emergency care and...