ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2021
Identifying Frequent Health Care Users and Care Consumption Patterns: Process Mining of Emergency Medical Services Data.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Frequent emergency department users in Finnish public healthcare - a nationwide registry-based study.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Frequent Users of Emergency Departments: Analysis of the Characteristics and Geographical Distribution in a Local Health Authority in Rome, Italy.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Frequent callers vs. frequent users - a scoping review of frequent contacts to the emergency medical services.International journal of emergency medicine · 2025Review
- Exploring Acute Pancreatitis Clinical Pathways Using a Novel Process Mining Method.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Defining a threshold above which an adult can be considered to frequently use ambulance services: a retrospective cross-sectional study of emergency calls to an ambulance service in England.British paramedic journal · 2023Article
- Appropriateness of frequent use of emergency departments: A retrospective analysis in Rome, Italy.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTracing frequent users of health care services is highly relevant to policymakers and clinicians, enabling them to avoid wasting scarce resources. Data collection on frequent users from all possible health care providers may be cumbersome due to patient privacy, competition, incompatible information systems, and the efforts involved.
objectiveThis study explored the use of a single key source, emergency medical services (EMS) records, to trace and reveal frequent users' health care consumption patterns.
methodsA retrospective study was performed analyzing EMS calls from the province of Drenthe in the Netherlands between 2012 and 2017. Process mining was applied to identify the structure of patient routings (ie, their consecutive visits to hospitals, nursing homes, and EMS). Routings are used to identify and quantify frequent users, recognizing frail elderly users as a focal group. The structure of these routes was analyzed at the patient and group levels, aiming to gain insight into regional coordination issues and workload distributions among health care providers.
resultsFrail elderly users aged 70 years or more represented over 50% of frequent users, making 4 or more calls per year. Over the period of observation, their annual number and the number of calls increased from 395 to 628 and 2607 to 3615, respectively. Structural analysis based on process mining revealed two categories of frail elderly users: low-complexity patients who need dialysis, radiation therapy, or hyperbaric medicine, involving a few health care providers, and high-complexity patients for whom routings appear chaotic.
conclusionsThis efficient approach exploits the role of EMS as the unique regional "ferryman," while the combined use of EMS data and process mining allows for the effective and efficient tracing of frequent users' utilization of health care services. The approach informs regional policymakers and clinicians by quantifying and detailing frequent user consumption patterns to support subsequent policy adaptations.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.