Healthcare DIVE December 21, 2022
Dive Brief:
- High-intensity billing for emergency services has increased significantly since 2006, according to a recent study.
- The proportion of emergency room visits billed as “high intensity” that don’t result in a hospitalization grew from 4.8% in 2006 to 19.2% in 2019, reflecting not simply increasingly aggressive coding, but the ER’s shifting role in the acute care ecosystem, researchers said.
- Roughly half of the growth in high-intensity billing was expected due to shifts in administrative measures of patient cases and care services available in claims data, along with potentially more serious conditions, such as chest and abdominal pain, making up a greater share of visits.
Dive Insight:
Researchers used an all-payer national sample of ERs to analyze high-intensity...
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