Dive Brief:
- National emergency room use remained largely unchanged between 2009 and 2016, but new data from the Health Cost Institute shows higher-severity codes were used more frequently, and the average prices for those codes grew more rapidly than lower-severity codes.
- HCI’s study expands upon previous research characterizing spending, price and utilization for five Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes that indicate the severity and complexity of an ER visit.
- The study found, among other things, that spending per person for the highest-severity ER visit grew by 145% between 2009 and 2016, with the second-highest severity ER visit growing by 124% in that same time period.