At Bamboo Health, we’re always looking for ways to help you better coordinate care. We’ve designed our Bamboo Health flags with this in mind. These flags are dynamically applied to patients’ Pings and profiles to highlight utilization patterns that may require more timely intervention from you and your team. We’ve described each flag in detail below; you can always hover on any flag in our application to view additional details as well!
In this article:
High Utilizer Flag
The high utilizer flag applies to any patient who has visited the ED three or more times within the past 60 days. This includes patients who’ve been to the ED three times at the same hospital, as well as patients who’ve visited the ED at multiple hospitals.
This flag identifies patients who may benefit from a check-in from your population health management team regarding their ED utilization patterns and education on other, more appropriate sites of care for future care events.
Readmission Risk Flag
The readmission risk flag identifies patients who may be at risk for a 30-Day All-Cause Hospital Readmission. This flag will be applied to patients in the ED or under observation who also have had inpatient admission in the prior 30 days.
This flag identifies opportunities to reduce potential readmission penalties.
Recent Inpatient Stay Flag
The recent inpatient stay flag will be applied to patients who currently are inpatient and had another inpatient admission in the preceding 30 days.
This flag highlights patient events that may qualify as 30-Day All-Cause Hospital Readmissions and provides opportunities to revisit care coordination workflows to prevent future, similar patterns of care.
Recent SNF Stay Flag
The recent SNF stay flag will be applied to patients who are currently at the hospital and also have been discharged from skilled services at an SNF within the prior 30 days.
This flag highlights potential opportunities to discharge patients to SNF care without an additional three-overnight hospital stay. 
3-Day Waiver Flag
The 3-day waiver flag applies to patient events that have been marked by an SNF as having occurred under the 3-day rule waiver.
This flag provides transparency on your patients admitted to a Skilled Nursing Facility under the waiver. It will also allow you to report specifically on your 3DW patient events through the export feature.
Flag Locations
These flags will be listed in 3 locations:
- On Pings on your Ping feed
- On patient cards on your patient roster
- In your patients’ profiles for more details on the patient’s current and prior events, simply click on their name, and you’ll be brought to the patient’s profile. There, you’ll find comprehensive visit history and care team information.
Flag Visibility
Bamboo Health flags are dynamic, so once a patient no longer matches the flag criteria, the flag will be removed from the patient’s information in the platform.
For example, if a high utilizer patient subsequently does not have another ED event for the following 60-day period, that patient no longer matches the high utilizer flag’s criteria. The high utilizer flag therefore will be removed from the patient’s information in the Pings platform. The same is true for patients to whom the readmission risk flag is applied. If a patient with the readmission risk flag ultimately is readmitted to the inpatient setting, they no longer meet the criteria for that flag. Instead, at this point, the recent inpatient stay flag will be applied, as the patient now meets this flag’s criteria.
Flags in Exports
As noted above, once a patient no longer matches the flag criteria, the flag will be removed from the patient’s information on your dashboard. You can access historic flag data at any time by pulling an export from your reporting tab; exports will detail which Bamboo Health flags applied to your patients' events at the time they occurred.