Economic evaluation of diverting low-risk patients from the emergency department to adjacent out-of-hours…

Randomized trialPrimary health care research & development· Jul 2026

Economic evaluation of diverting low-risk patients from the emergency department to adjacent out-of-hours primary care in Belgium.

Jane Phiri, Stefan Morreel, Diana De Graeve … Lander Willem

Emergency MedicineRandomized trialClinical practiceQ1IF 2.0

Diverting low-risk emergency department patients to out-of-hours primary care lowered per-patient costs.

Economic evaluation of diverting low-risk patients from the emergency department to adjacent out-of-hours primary care in Belgium.

Jane Phiri … Lander Willem

Primary health care research & development · Jul 2026

Background

Out-of-hours primary care (OOH-PC) has been introduced in many health systems to reduce non-urgent emergency department (emergency department) use.

Purpose

Compare direct medical costs, time spent at the facility, and hospitalization probability across risk and care setting subgroups from a societal perspective.

Methods

We analysed data from a cluster-randomized trial conducted in Belgium that examined a nurse-led triage system.

Results

cheaper per patient to treat low-risk cases at primary care than the emergency department

cost reduction (€) 24 (95% CI 14 to 39)

CI excludes the null - significant

More results

From a societal perspective, the average incremental net monetary benefit was €49.5 per low-risk patient.

Aggregately, we estimated that the 37 intervention weekends in 2019 led to an average saving of €14,136 in direct medical costs and cumulative time savings of 28 days.

“

Conclusion · 1 of 2

Diverting low-risk patients from the emergency department to OOH-PC resulted in cost- and time-savings for low-risk patients at the study site.

Conclusion · 2 of 2

These findings highlight the potential to improve out-of-hours healthcare delivery to maximize benefits for patients and healthcare systems, although confirmation in other healthcare settings is required before wider implementation.

Economic evaluation of diverting low-risk patients from the emergency department to adjacent out-of-hours primary care in Belgium.

Economic evaluation of diverting low-risk patients from the emergency department to adjacent out-of-hours primary care in Belgium.

Related papers