F.L.A.R.E. Plan: Emergency Department Asthma Discharge Instructions
Did you know?
- Among adults with asthma, 19% seek care in the emergency department at least once a year.
- For children with asthma in Medicaid: 34% use the emergency department for asthma care, only 15% have a follow-up office visit within 30 days of a visit to the emergency department for their asthma
- For children dying from asthma where the death was considered preventable, they visit the emergency department an average of 2 times in the year prior to death.
- For adults, they visit the emergency department an average of 6 times in the year prior to death.
What is the FLARE Plan?
The FLARE plan is a comprehensive and concise tool to help patients receive discharge instructions based on the NAEPP Guidelines for asthma management.
- Follow up with your doctor
- Learn your medications
- Asthma is a chronic disease
- Respond to warning signs
- Emergency Care
These uniform emergency department discharge instructions may help reduce preventable emergency visits and hospitalizations by saving time, presenting thorough asthma educational messages, and by improving the quality of care and quality of life by providing the asthma patients with a plan of action until they can follow-up with their primary care physician.
What do the instructions include?
The instructions include:
- A simple short-term asthma management plan to be used until the patient sees their primary care provider
- A basic asthma information sheet designed to be a teaching guide at discharge and for supplemental information once home. Both are written at a sixth grade level.
Who is behind the FLARE Plan?
The Asthma Initiative of Michigan (AIM) organized a collaborative group of asthma care experts, representing hospitals, health plans, emergency department physicians, physician assistants, nurses, respiratory therapists, asthma educators, and pulmonologists to design standard emergency department instructions for asthma.
Use of the FLARE plan and the concept of standardized instructions has won support from the Michigan College of Emergency Physicians, the Society of Emergency Medicine Physician Assistants, the Michigan chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Michigan Thoracic Society.