ABSTRACT
"Hot spotting" has practically become the battle cry for managed care organizations since an article of the same name was published in The New Yorker in January 2011.1 In this chapter, a physician, Jeffrey Brenner, realized after attempting to save a shooting victim that it was possible to study healthcare utilization patterns in much the same way assault and crime patterns are tracked. Though hardly a new idea, the concept of identifying and intervening with the most severe or clinically complex patients to lower future healthcare costs has seen resurgence in the managed care arena. Proponents and critics of healthcare reform do agree on one thing: there are ways to decrease overall healthcare costs through population-based care management programs. Using current and predicted healthcare costs, it is possible to identify those health plan members who are currently highest cost and will remain high cost in the absence of healthcare interventions.
