Over in this week’s Forefront story, Jake Blumgart looks at the much-discussed practice of hot spotting, a patient-centered form of health care that focuses more on preventing sick people from going to the hospital than filling hospital beds when they are already there. Pioneered in the U.S. by Camden, N.J.-based Dr. Jeffrey Brenner, the model has since spread to Trenton, N.J., and both cities have seen the rate of emergency room visits reduce dramatically.
Brenner’s organization, the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, this year received federal money to replicate the hot spotting program in four other cities: San Diego, Allentown, Pa., Aurora, Colo. and Kansas City, Mo. With that in mind, below we have a chart detailing some medical stats from each of these cities, plus the two where hot spotting is already in place and two others (Philadelphia and Boston) where it may very well spread in the future.

Graphic by Stephen Kennedy