Cardiovascular line items central to hospitals’ outpatient revenue

Cardiovascular diagnoses such as chest pain and atherosclerotic heart disease are key drivers of outpatient payments, which accounted for almost 57 percent of hospitals’ net patient revenue in 2017, according to data compiled by Definitive Healthcare.

The healthcare analytics company also tracked ICD-10 diagnosis data from January through June of 2018 and reported the 10 most common outpatient diagnoses as well as those that generated the most total payments.

“Chest pain, unspecified” and “other chest pain” were Nos. 3 and 4 on the total payments list, while stable coronary heart disease ranked No. 7. In a blog post, Definitive Healthcare noted the chest pain ICD codes have...