Inside Northwell Health's ED Follow-Up Playbook: Reducing Returns and Improving Throughput

Inside Northwell Health's ED Follow-Up Playbook: Reducing Returns and Improving Throughput

From Bright Spots in Healthcare by Eric Glazer

May 26, 2026 · 41 min

About this episode

This episode discusses Northwell Health's innovative approach to improving emergency department follow-up processes to enhance patient care and reduce readmissions.

What happens after a patient leaves the emergency department is often where performance is won, or lost. This episode features a presentation from the recently held ROI-Centered Care Summit, a half-day virtual summit produced by Bright Spots Ventures in partnership with TytoCare and the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). In this episode, Albert Villarin, MD, MBA, FACEP, VP & Chief Medical Information Officer at Northwell Health, shares how his team redesigned the ED follow-up model to reduce avoidable returns, improve patient experience, and shorten length of stay, by rethinking discharge as the start of a coordinated, end-to-end process. Rather than treating discharge as a handoff, Northwell Health built an integrated model that connects workflows across clinical teams, patient communication, and technology, ensuring patients not only receive instructions, but understand and act on them. You'll hear how Northwell Health: Builds a connected follow-up model across the full patient journey, from admission through post-discharge touchpoints Uses automated outreach, education, and callback workflows to close care gaps after ED visits Embeds language access and fully translated…

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