Changes in Emergency Department Visits in the Initial Period of the COVID-19 Pandemic (April–December 2020), 29 States

Excerpt

This Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) Statistical Brief presents data on ED visits from 29 States based on the 2019 and 2020 State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD) and a subset of the State Inpatient Databases (SID) that includes information on ED visits that result in an admission to the same hospital. The initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic (April–December 2020) is compared with the same months of the prior year. ED visit volume and ED admission rate (defined as the percentage of ED visits that result in hospitalization) are presented for both time periods across all conditions and for COVID-19-related visits specifically. In addition, the variation in the ED admission rate across the 29 States is provided. Information on changes in ED visit volume and ED admission rate is presented by patient characteristics and for the conditions with the largest percentage increase and decrease between April–December 2019 and April–December 2020. Because the HCUP SID and SEDD cover nearly the entire universe of hospital encounters in a State, small differences can be evident but not meaningful. Thus, only differences greater than or equal to 10 percent are discussed in the text.