Healthcare spending in U.S. emergency departments by health condition, 2006-2016.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare spending in the emergency department (ED) setting has received intense focus from policymakers in the United States (U.S.). Relatively few studies have systematically evaluated ED spending over time or disaggregated ED spending by policy-relevant groups, including health condition, age, sex, and payer to inform these discussions. This study's objective is to estimate ED spending trends in the U.S. from 2006 to 2016, by age, sex, payer, and across 154 health conditions and assess ED spending per visit over time. METHODS AND FINDINGS: This observational study utilized the National Emergency Department Sample, a nationally representative sample of hospital-based ED visits in the U.S. to measure healthcare spending for ED care. All spending estimates were adjusted for inflation and presented in 2016 U.S. Dollars. Overall ED spending was $79.2 billion (CI, $79.2 billion-$79.2 billion) in 2006 and grew to $136.6 billion (CI, $136.6 billion-$136.6 billion) in 2016, representing a population-adjusted annualized rate of change of 4.4% (CI, 4.4%-4.5%) as compared to total healthcare spending (1.4% [CI, 1.4%-1.4%]) during that same ten-year period. The percentage of U.S. health spending attributable to the ED has increased from 3.9% (CI, 3.9%-3.9%) in 2006 to 5.0% (CI, 5.0%-5.0%) in 2016. Nearly equal parts of ED spending in 2016 was paid by private payers (49.3% [CI, 49.3%-49.3%]) and public payers (46.9% [CI, 46.9%-46.9%]), with the remainder attributable to out-of-pocket spending (3.9% [CI, 3.9%-3.9%]). In terms of key groups, the majority of ED spending was allocated among females (versus males) and treat-and-release patients (versus those hospitalized); those between age 20-44 accounted for a plurality of ED spending. Road injuries, falls, and urinary diseases witnessed the highest levels of ED spending, accounting for 14.1% (CI, 13.1%-15.1%) of total ED spending in 2016. ED spending per visit also increased over time from $660.0 (CI, $655.1-$665.2) in 2006 to $943.2 (CI, $934.3-$951.6) in 2016, or at an annualized rate of 3.4% (CI, 3.3%-3.4%). CONCLUSIONS: Though ED spending accounts for a relatively small portion of total health system spending in the U.S., ED spending is sizable and growing. Understanding which diseases are driving this spending is helpful for informing value-based reforms that can impact overall health care costs.

Resource utilization and outcomes in emergency general surgery during the COVID19 pandemic: An observational cost analysis.

BACKGROUND: Over the course of the COVID19 pandemic, global healthcare delivery has declined. Surgery is one of the most resource-intensive area of medicine; loss of surgical care has had untold health and economic consequences. Herein, we evaluate resource utilization, outcomes, and healthcare costs associated with unplanned surgery admissions during the height of the pandemic in 2020 versus the same period in 2019. METHODS: Retrospective analysis on patients ≥18 years admitted from the emergency department to General & Digestive and Gastrointestinal Surgery Services between February and May 2019 and 2020 at our center; clinical outcomes and unadjusted and adjusted per-person healthcare costs were analyzed. RESULTS: Consults and admissions to surgery declined between February and May 2020 by 37% and 19%, respectively, relative to the same period in 2019, with even greater relative decline during late March and early April. Time between onset of symptoms to diagnosis increased from 2±3 days 2019 to 5±22 days 2020 (P = 0.01). Overall hospital stay was two days less in 2020 (P = 0.19). Complications (Comprehensive Complication Index 10.3±23.7 2019 vs. 13.9±25.5 2020, P = 0.10) and mortality rates (3% vs. 4%, respectively, P = 0.58) did not vary. Mean unadjusted per-person costs for patients in the 2019 and 2020 cohorts were 5,886.72€±12,576.33€ and 5,287.62±7,220.16€, respectively (P = 0.43). Following multivariate analysis, costs remained similar (4,656.89€±390.53€ 2019 vs. 4,938.54±406.55€ 2020, P = 0.28). CONCLUSIONS: Healthcare delivery and spending for unplanned general surgery admissions declined considerably due to COVID19. These results provide a small yet relevant illustration of clinical and economic ramifications of this healthcare crisis.

The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Economics of United States Emergency Care.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: We describe how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affected the economics of emergency department care (ED). METHODS: We conducted an observational study of 136 EDs from January 2019 to September 2020, using 2020-to-2019 3-week moving ratios for ED visits, complexity, revenue, and staffing expenses. We tabulated 2020-to-2019 staffing ratios and calculated hour and full-time-equivalent changes. RESULTS: Following the COVID-19 pandemic's onset, geriatric (age ≥65), adult (age 18 to 64), and pediatric (age <18) ED visits declined by 43%, 40%, and 73%, respectively, compared to 2019 visits and rose thereafter but remained below 2019 levels through September. Relative value units per visit rose by 8%, 9%, and 18%, respectively, compared to 2019, while ED admission rates rose by 32%. Both fell subsequently but remained above 2019 levels through September. Revenues dropped sharply early in the pandemic and rose gradually but remained below 2019 levels. In medium and large EDs, staffing and expenses were lowered with a lag, largely compensating for lower revenue at these sites, and barely at freestanding EDs. Staffing and expense reductions could not match revenue losses in smaller EDs. During the pandemic, emergency physician and advanced practice provider clinical hours and compensation fell 15% and 27%, respectively, corresponding to 174 lost physician and 193 lost advanced practice provider full-time-equivalent positions. CONCLUSION: The COVID-19 pandemic adversely impacted the economics of ED care, with large drops in overall and, in particular, low-acuity ED visits, necessitating reductions in clinical hours. Staffing cutbacks could not match reduced revenue at small EDs with minimum emergency physician coverage requirements.

Modelling of hypothetical SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care tests on admission to hospital from A&E: rapid cost-effectiveness analysis.

BACKGROUND: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019. At the time of writing (October 2020), the number of cases of COVID-19 had been approaching 38 million and more than 1 million deaths were attributable to it. SARS-CoV-2 appears to be highly transmissible and could rapidly spread in hospital wards. OBJECTIVE: The work undertaken aimed to estimate the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of viral detection point-of-care tests for detecting SARS-CoV-2 compared with laboratory-based tests. A further objective was to assess occupancy levels in hospital areas, such as waiting bays, before allocation to an appropriate bay. PERSPECTIVE/SETTING: The perspective was that of the UK NHS in 2020. The setting was a hypothetical hospital with an accident and emergency department. METHODS: An individual patient model was constructed that simulated the spread of disease and mortality within the hospital and recorded occupancy levels. Thirty-two strategies involving different hypothetical SARS-CoV-2 tests were modelled. Recently published desirable and acceptable target product profiles for SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care tests were modelled. Incremental analyses were undertaken using both incremental cost-effectiveness ratios and net monetary benefits, and key patient outcomes, such as death and intensive care unit care, caused directly by COVID-19 were recorded. RESULTS: A SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care test with a desirable target product profile appears to have a relatively small number of infections, a low occupancy level within the waiting bays, and a high net monetary benefit. However, if hospital laboratory testing can produce results in 6 hours, then the benefits of point-of-care tests may be reduced. The acceptable target product profiles performed less well and had lower net monetary benefits than both a laboratory-based test with a 24-hour turnaround time and strategies using data from currently available SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care tests. The desirable and acceptable point-of-care test target product profiles had lower requirement for patients to be in waiting bays before being allocated to an appropriate bay than laboratory-based tests, which may be of high importance in some hospitals. Tests that appeared more cost-effective also had better patient outcomes. LIMITATIONS: There is considerable uncertainty in the values for key parameters within the model, although calibration was undertaken in an attempt to mitigate this. The example hospital simulated will also not match those of decision-makers deciding on the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of introducing SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care tests. Given these limitations, the results should be taken as indicative rather than definitive, particularly cost-effectiveness results when the relative cost per SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care test is uncertain. CONCLUSIONS: Should a SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care test with a desirable target product profile become available, this appears promising, particularly when the reduction on the requirements for waiting bays before allocation to a SARS-CoV-2-infected bay, or a non-SARS-CoV-2-infected bay, is considered. The results produced should be informative to decision-makers who can identify the results most pertinent to their specific circumstances. FUTURE WORK: More accurate results could be obtained when there is more certainty on the diagnostic accuracy of, and the reduction in time to test result associated with, SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care tests, and on the impact of these tests on occupancy of waiting bays and isolation bays. These parameters are currently uncertain. FUNDING: This report was commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Evidence Synthesis programme as project number 132154. This project was funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 25, No. 21. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). SARS-CoV-2 is highly infectious, and this can cause problems in hospitals, where the virus can spread quickly. Laboratory-based tests can determine whether or not a patient has SARS-CoV-2, but these tests are not perfect and can require a considerable time to provide a result. Point-of-care tests to detect SARS-CoV-2 are being developed that may have much shorter times to a test result, although these are likely to be less accurate than laboratory-based tests. The benefit of quicker tests is that a decision to put a patient in a SARS-CoV-2-infected bay or in a non-SARS-CoV-2-infected bay can be made sooner, limiting contact between patients with SARS-CoV-2 and patients without SARS-CoV-2 and reducing the risk of infection transmission. The disadvantage of reduced accuracy is that some patients may be allocated to the wrong bay, increasing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. A computer model was built to explore the impact of using SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care tests for people admitted to hospital. This model estimated the number of infections and deaths due to COVID-19, the costs of testing, and the number of people waiting to be put in an appropriate bay. Strategies were run using different values, including the time to get a test result, the accuracy of tests and whether or not staff who do not have symptoms should be tested. The results of the model indicated that point-of-care tests could be good if there was a large reduction in the time to get a test result and if accuracy was high. However, it is not certain whether or not such tests will become available. When newer SARS-CoV-2 tests are available, the model will allow an estimate of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the test to be made.

Healthcare Encounter and Financial Impact of COVID-19 on Children's Hospitals.

Children's hospitals responded to COVID-19 by limiting nonurgent healthcare encounters, conserving personal protective equipment, and restructuring care processes to mitigate viral spread. We assessed year-over-year trends in healthcare encounters and hospital charges across US children's hospitals before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We performed a retrospective analysis, comparing healthcare encounters and inflation-adjusted charges from 26 tertiary children's hospitals reporting to the PROSPECT database from February 1 to June 30 in 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) and 2020 (during the COVID-19 pandemic). All children's hospitals experienced similar trends in healthcare encounters and charges during the study period. Inpatient bed-days, emergency department visits, and surgeries were lower by a median 36%, 65%, and 77%, respectively, per hospital by the week of April 15 (the nadir) in 2020 compared with 2019. Across the study period in 2020, children's hospitals experienced a median decrease of $276 million in charges.

The development and validation of a resource consumption score of an emergency department consultation.

BACKGROUND: Emergency Department (ED) visits and health care costs are increasing globally, but little is known about contributing factors of ED resource consumption. This study aims to analyse and to predict the total ED resource consumption out of the patient and consultation characteristics in order to execute performance analysis and evaluate quality improvements. METHODS: Characteristics of ED visits of a large Swiss university hospital were summarized according to acute patient condition factors (e.g. chief complaint, resuscitation bay use, vital parameter deviations), chronic patient conditions (e.g. age, comorbidities, drug intake), and contextual factors (e.g. night-time admission). Univariable and multivariable linear regression analyses were conducted with the total ED resource consumption as the dependent variable. RESULTS: In total, 164,729 visits were included in the analysis. Physician resources accounted for the largest proportion (54.8%), followed by radiology (19.2%), and laboratory work-up (16.2%). In the multivariable final model, chief complaint had the highest impact on the total ED resource consumption, followed by resuscitation bay use and admission by ambulance. The impact of age group was small. The multivariable final model was validated (R2 of 0.54) and a scoring system was derived out of the predictors. CONCLUSIONS: More than half of the variation in total ED resource consumption can be predicted by our suggested model in the internal validation, but further studies are needed for external validation. The score developed can be used to calculate benchmarks of an ED and provides leaders in emergency care with a tool that allows them to evaluate resource decisions and to estimate effects of organizational changes.

For-Profit Hospitals Out of Business? Financial Sustainability During the COVID-19 Epidemic Emergency Response.

This perspective argues that for-profit hospitals will be heavily affected by epidemic crises, including the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Policy-makers should be aware that for-profit hospitals in particular are likely to face financial distress. The suspension of all non-urgent elective surgery and the relegation of market-based mechanisms that determines the allocation and compensation of care puts the financial state of these hospitals at serious risk. We identify three organisational factors that determine which hospitals might be most affected (ie, care-portfolio, size and whether it is private equity [PE]-owned). In addition, we analyse contextual factors that could explain the impact of financial distress among for-profit hospitals on the wider healthcare system.

Economic impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on acute care hospitals in Japan.

BACKGROUND: In response to the coronavirus diseases 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Japanese government declared a state of emergency on April 7, 2020. Six days earlier, the Japan Surgical Society had recommended postponing elective surgical procedures. Along with the growing public fear of COVID-19, hospital visits in Japan decreased. METHODS: Using claims data from the Quality Indicator/Improvement Project (QIP) database, this study aimed to clarify the impact of the first wave of the pandemic, considered to be from March to May 2020, on case volume and claimed hospital charges in acute care hospitals during this period. To make year-over-year comparisons, we considered cases from July 2018 to June 2020. RESULTS: A total of 2,739,878 inpatient and 53,479,658 outpatient cases from 195 hospitals were included. In the year-over-year comparisons, total claimed hospital charges decreased in April, May, June 2020 by 7%, 14%, and 5%, respectively, compared to the same months in 2019. Our results also showed that per-case hospital charges increased during this period, possibly to compensate for the reduced case volumes. Regression results indicated that the hospital charges in April and May 2020 decreased by 6.3% for hospitals without COVID-19 patients. For hospitals with COVID-19 patients, there was an additional decrease in proportion with the length of hospital stay of COVID-19 patients including suspected cases. The mean additional decrease per COVID-19 patient was estimated to 5.5 million JPY. CONCLUSION: It is suggested that the hospitals treating COVID-19 patients were negatively incentivized.

Point-of-care diagnostic tests for influenza in the emergency department: A cost-effectiveness analysis in a high-risk population from a Canadian perspective.

BACKGROUND: Our objective was to assess the cost-effectiveness of novel rapid diagnostic tests: rapid influenza diagnostic tests (RIDT), digital immunoassays (DIA), rapid nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT), and other treatment algorithms for influenza in high-risk patients presenting to hospital with influenza-like illness (ILI). METHODS: We developed a decision-analytic model to assess the cost-effectiveness of diagnostic test strategies (RIDT, DIA, NAAT, clinical judgement, batch polymerase chain reaction) preceding treatment; no diagnostic testing and treating everyone; and not treating anyone. We modeled high-risk 65-year old patients from a health payer perspective and accrued outcomes over a patient's lifetime. We reported health outcomes, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), healthcare costs, and net health benefit (NHB) to measure cost-effectiveness per cohort of 100,000 patients. RESULTS: Treating everyone with no prior testing was the most cost-effective strategy, at a cost-effectiveness threshold of $50,000/QALY, in over 85% of simulations. This strategy yielded the highest NHB of 15.0344 QALYs, but inappropriately treats all patients without influenza. Of the novel rapid diagnostics, NAAT resulted in the highest NHB (15.0277 QALYs), and the least number of deaths (1,571 per 100,000). Sensitivity analyses determined that results were most impacted by the pretest probability of ILI being influenza, diagnostic test sensitivity, and treatment effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: Based on our model, treating high-risk patients presenting to hospital with influenza-like illness, without performing a novel rapid diagnostic test, resulted in the highest NHB and was most cost-effective. However, consideration of whether treatment is appropriate in the absence of diagnostic confirmation should be taken into account for decision-making by clinicians and policymakers.

CLINICAL DECISION MAKING IN OLDER ADULTS WITH COVID-19 IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: LOOKING BEYOND CHRONOLOGICAL AGE.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been declared a global pandemic. Older adults have been found as a vulnerable group for developing severe forms of disease and increased mortality. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to propose a pathway to assist the decision-making process for hospital resource allocation for older adults with COVID-19 using simple geriatric assessment-based tools. METHODS: We reviewed the available literature at this point of the COVID-19 outbreak, focusing in older adult care to extract key recommendations for those health-care professionals who will be treating older adults in the hospital emergency ward (HEW) in developing countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: We listed a series of easy recommendations for non-geriatrician doctors in the HEW and suggested simple tools for hospital resource allocation during critical care evaluation of older adults with COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Age must not be used as the sole criterion for resource allocation among older adults with COVID-19. Simple and efficient tools are available to identify components of the comprehensive geriatric assessment, which could be useful to predict outcomes and provide high-quality care that would fit the particular needs of older adults in resource-limited settings amidst this global pandemic.

The impact of the Great Recession on California domestic violence events, and related hospitalizations and emergency service visits.

OBJECTIVE: Explore the impact of the Great Recession on domestic violence (DV) related hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits in California. METHODS: Hospital and ED data were drawn from California's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD). DV-related hospitalizations and ED visits in California were analyzed between January 2000 and September 2015 (53,596), along with total medical costs. Time series were divided into pre-recession (Jan 2000-Nov 2007) and recession/post-recession (Dec 2007-Sept 2015) periods. RESULTS: The medical cost of DV-related hospitalizations alone was estimated as $1,136,165,861. A dramatic increase in DV episodes was found potentially associated with the Great Recession. The number of ED visits per month tripled from pre- to post-recession (104.9 vs. 290.6), along with an increased number of hospitalizations (77.1 vs. 95.6); African Americans and Native Americans were disproportionally impacted. In addition, psychiatric comorbidities, severe DV episodes, in-hospital mortality and charge per hospitalization escalated. The rise in DV hospitalizations and ED visits beginning in December 2007 was mainly attributable to physical abuse episodes in adults; minors had no change in DV trends. DISCUSSION: Recessions are frequent in modern economies and are repeated cyclically. Our study provides critical information on the effects of the 2007 financial crisis on DV-related healthcare service utilization in California. Given the current financial crisis associated with COVID-19, which expert predict could extend for years, the results from this study shine a spotlight on the importance of DV-related screening, prevention and response.