MedZed and the New Era of ED Diversion and Avoidance
As healthcare systems evolve to meet rising costs and complex patient needs, Emergency Department (ED) diversion has become a vital strategy for transforming care delivery. The goal is simple but profound: ensure patients receive the right care, at the right time, in the right place—ideally outside of the emergency room unless absolutely necessary.
This shift is not driven by a single entity. Instead, it reflects coordinated action across the healthcare ecosystem—health plans, primary care providers, population health teams, public agencies, and community-based organizations—all working toward a shared goal: managing health proactively, reducing emergency reliance, and delivering whole-person care.
Health Plans as Orchestrators of Diversion
Health plans play a central role in identifying at-risk members and steering them toward more appropriate care options. Through tools like 24/7 nurse advice lines, virtual urgent care, and predictive analytics, plans can flag patterns of unnecessary ED use and intervene early. These insights allow care teams to connect members with timely in-home care, chronic disease management, or behavioral health support.
Importantly, health plans increasingly partner with community-based providers to deliver services beyond traditional clinical settings—extending their reach into homes and neighborhoods where risk often begins.
Primary Care Practices: Building Accessibility and Continuity
Meanwhile, primary care practices serve as the front line of diversion efforts. By offering same-day appointments, extended hours, integrated behavioral health, and chronic disease support, practices reduce the chances that patients resort to the ED during health crises.
Real-time ED alerts further strengthen the loop. When patients do visit the ED, primary care providers receive immediate notifications, allowing for rapid follow-up. This helps address the root causes of the visit and prevents unnecessary returns—turning reactive events into proactive care opportunities.
Population Health and Public Agencies: Tackling the Upstream Drivers
Beyond individual care, population health programs take a data-driven approach to address community-level risks. Using predictive models, they identify hotspots of ED overuse and intervene with strategies that reach into patients’ daily lives. Community health workers and care navigators deliver support in the home, while remote patient monitoring tools help manage chronic illness before it escalates.
These teams focus heavily on social determinants of health—housing instability, food insecurity, transportation barriers, and behavioral health needs—that often lead to preventable ED use.
State and local public agencies amplify these efforts by promoting policies and programs that support non-traditional care delivery. From expanding Medicaid waivers to funding Crisis Stabilization Units (CSUs), mobile response teams, and behavioral health reforms, they help scale models that meet patients where they are—especially in underserved and rural areas.
MedZed: The Missing Link in the Continuum
At the nexus of these efforts is MedZed, an organization that operationalizes ED diversion by embedding community-based care directly into patients’ lives.
MedZed deploys Community Health Navigators (CHNs)—trusted, culturally aligned professionals from the same neighborhoods as the patients they serve. These navigators visit patients in their homes, offering education, coordinating care, and linking them to services from their health plan, primary care team, and local community organizations.
What distinguishes MedZed is how seamlessly it integrates across the healthcare system. Its CHNs do more than deliver services—they align fragmented efforts, creating a coordinated, high-touch support system around the patient. This allows interventions to be both medically sound and deeply personalized.
A Proven Model with Real-World Impact
MedZed’s approach is especially effective for Medicaid and dually eligible patients—populations that often face significant barriers to accessing care. Many are living with multiple chronic conditions, lack stable housing or transportation, and frequently rely on the ED for basic health needs.
One striking case from the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) illustrates MedZed’s impact. A CHN persistently engaged a Medi-Cal member living in their car, managing both physical and behavioral health conditions. Through trust-building and wraparound support, the CHN helped the patient secure temporary housing, connected them to behavioral health services, and enrolled them in critical public benefits. This engagement didn’t just divert an ED visit—it transformed the trajectory of the patient’s health and stability.
From the Bedside to the Living Room: How MedZed Closes the Loop
MedZed’s CHNs are flexible and responsive. If a patient is admitted to the ED or hospitalized, the CHN doesn’t wait—they meet the patient at the bedside. They initiate discharge education early, ensure follow-up appointments are scheduled, and support patients through post-discharge recovery.
They also educate patients on appropriate care navigation—when to use telehealth, how to contact a nurse line, or where to find a nearby urgent care clinic. By addressing access barriers like transportation or language, CHNs make it more likely that patients will avoid unnecessary ED visits in the future.
These interventions reinforce important healthcare quality metrics, including follow-up after ED visits for behavioral health, medication adherence, diabetes control, and care coordination—areas where MedZed’s clients often see measurable improvements.
Redesigning Healthcare Around the Patient
What MedZed exemplifies is a shift from episodic, reactive care to continuous, relationship-based support. By embedding itself in the daily lives of patients and communities, it brings together the strengths of health plans, providers, and public health programs into a unified care experience.
ED diversion is no longer just about managing volume. It’s about reimagining care delivery—centered on prevention, community engagement, and upstream intervention. As healthcare continues its pivot toward value, MedZed offers a scalable, evidence-based model for improving outcomes, reducing costs, and restoring trust in the system—one patient at a time.
Carisha Cabasa, DNP, RN
Dr. Carisha Cabasa is the Vice President of Clinical Care, Operations & Client Success at MedZed. She brings over 25 years of experience in healthcare with a proven track record in strategy, operations, customer success, business development, change management, and organizational leadership. Prior to joining MedZed, she held leadership roles at Myia Health, TransformativeMed, Life Image, Healthways, and Cerner, and is the founder of VanzHealth.
Carisha holds a Master of Science in Nursing from the University of California, San Francisco, and a Doctor of Nursing Practice from Creighton University. She also serves as adjunct faculty at Creighton University's College of Nursing, where she teaches in the nursing administration and leadership track.
