Revisits for 8.3 percent of patients with index ER visit

(HealthDay)—Overall, 8.3 percent of patients with an index emergency department visit have a revisit within three days, according to a study published in the June 2 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Reena Duseja, M.D., from the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues examined revisit rates in an observational study involving adults with emergency department visits between 2006 and 2010. Data were included from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project databases for six states.

The researchers found that 8.3 percent of patients had a revisit within three days of an index emergency department visit; 32 percent of revisits occurred at a different institution. The rate of revisits varied by diagnosis, with the highest rate seen for skin infections (23.1 percent). Revisit rates varied by state, with skin infection revisit rates varying from 24.8 percent in Florida to 10.6 percent in Nebraska. In Florida, which was the only state with complete cost data, the costs for the 19.8 percent of patients with a revisit within 30 days represented 118 percent of the total index emergency department costs for all patients.

"Revisits after an index emergency department encounter are more frequent than previously reported, in part because many occur outside the index institution," the authors write.

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