Use of Emergency Medical Services and Characteristics of Urgent and Non-Urgent Adult Patients according to the Usual Source of Care: A Korea Medical Expenditure Panel Study

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Use of emergency rooms (ERs) has increased considerably in Korea. This increase has caused over-crowding and has increased the burden on ER services, created a lack of continuous service provided by ERs, and raised costs. The objective of this study was to examine the characteristics of ER use for urgent and non-urgent cases in 2009-2011. METHODS: In this multivariate analysis, we included data collected from the 2009-2011 Korea Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to assess independent factors associated with ER use in non-urgent settings. We consecutively included patients > or =19 years who had completed the survey until 2011. RESULTS: Among the 10,428 respondents, 19.1% of patients had used ERs. Patients who had used EDs were less likely to have attended graduate school (high school odds ratio [OR], 0.78 [0.63-0.98]; university OR, 0.69 [0.54-0.89]) or have chronic disease (OR 0.68 [0.60-0.78]). In addition, patients who did not have a usual source of care (OR, 0.78 [0.70-0.87]) or those who did not have private insurance (OR, 0.86 [0.74-0.99]) were less likely to use ERs. In the 1,994 cases of ER use, however, the any factors were not affected in the non-urgent ER use group. CONCLUSION: The number of patients who used ERs has increased, and there were no significant differences in ER use between non-urgent and urgent patients. ERs may have been used for non-urgent cases owing to other reasons. Further studies on the reasons for non-urgent ER use and development of urgent patient criteria are required.