Series 13, No. 150. Trends in Hospital Emergency Department Utilization: United States, 1992-99. 42 pp. (PHS) 2000-1721.
View/download PDF 3.6 KB

Hospital emergency departments (ED’s) account for about 10 percent of all ambulatory medical care in the United States. According to a new report released by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), there were over 102 million visits to the ED’s of non-Federal, short-stay hospitals in the United States. ED’s offer a wide variety of medical care including providing stabilization for critically ill patients, rapid processing and treatment for injuries from trauma incidents, and medical treatment for less urgent conditions including chronic and acute illnesses and minor injuries.

Data Highlights:
Between 1992 and 1999, the amount of ED utilization increased by 14 percent from 89.8 million to 102.8 million visits annually.
The average patient age increased from 33.0 to 35.7 years. Older patients are more likely to have multiple diagnoses and require more medications than younger patients.
Increasing trends were observed for all the leading diagnoses, i.e. chest pain, abdominal pain, spinal disorders and asthma.
Overall, there was no change in the percent of visits with imaging, but the percent of visits where extremity x-rays were ordered declined as the use of CAT scans and MRI’s rose (up 103 percent from 2.4 percent in 1992 to 4.9 percent in 1999.)

Keywords: emergency department visits, diagnoses, trends, health policy

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007