SARAH VARNEY:

This patient, who asked not to be identified, has chronic massive ulcers, AIDS, hears voices, and, at times, spends three weeks out of the month at multiple hospitals around Houston.

Gurley is part of a promising effort in the U.S. health care system: Honing in on so-called "super-utilizers," patients with complex problems who frequent emergency rooms and cost public and private insurers dearly.

Super-utilizers make up just 5 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for 50 percent of health care spending. As health care costs continue to rise, providers are trying to find these patients and get to the root of their problems.

An effort to do just that started in New Jersey's poorest city: Camden. Family physician Dr. Jeffrey Brenner was inspired by how police departments were using crime data to detect hot spots. To find Camden's health care hot spots, Brenner dug into ambulance records and E.R. data to show how high-cost patients were shuttling between city hospitals.

DR. JEFFREY BRENNER, Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers: In America, we're medicalizing social problems, and we're criminalizing social problems, and we're wasting huge amounts of public resources.