• Mattan Bar-Yishay, Limor Adler, Alon Bar El, Limor Boker Faran, Miri Mizrahi Reuveni, Shelley A Sternberg, Eduardo Schejter, Zorian Radomyslsky, Yakov Segal, Joseph Azuri, and Ilan Yehoshua.
• Department of Family Medicine, Maccabi Healthcare Services, Tel Aviv 6812509, Israel.
• Fam Pract. 2024 Oct 8; 41 (5): 755760755-760.

BackgroundMaccabi-RED is a new service developed in Israel that allows primary care staff to direct urgent cases to specialists in the community for evaluation in their local clinics on the same day as an alternative to an emergency department (ED) visit. A primary care physician or a nurse can activate the service, and all nearby specialists receive "a call" and can decide if they are willing to accept it, thus allowing the patient to avoid an unnecessary visit to the ED.AimTo quantify and characterize the medical care provided by this service in a large national healthcare system.Design And SettingMulticenter, community-based, retrospective cohort study.MethodsAll Maccabi-RED visits recorded between September 2021 and August 2022 were included. Patient characteristics were compared to national demographics. Descriptive statistics were used to present data regarding recorded diagnoses, treating physicians, treatments or referrals provided, and subsequent emergency department admissions or hospitalizations.Results31831 visits were recorded. Most frequent diagnoses were musculoskeletal pain (12.1%), otitis or otalgia (7.8%), contusions (7.6%), fractures (7.1%), foreign body (6.7%), pregnancy-related symptoms (6.3%), and upper-respiratory or unspecified viral infection (6.3%). The most common treatments reported were foreign body removal (5%) and cast application (3.5%). Only 7.8% of visits resulted in emergency department admission within seven days (any cause). The average time from patient request to physician treatment was 91 min.ConclusionsMaccabi-RED is being widely used by patients nationwide. Additional studies are needed to investigate whether Maccabi-RED reduces emergency department visits and costs.© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.

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