• Kohei Hasegawa, Yusuke Tsugawa, Carlos A Camargo, and David F M Brown.
• From the Department of Emergency Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (K.H., C.A.C., D.F.M.B.); Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (K.H., C.A.C., D.F.M.B.); and Harvard Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy, Cambridge, MA (Y.T.). khasegawa1@partners.org.
• Circ Cardiovasc Qual. 2014 Sep 1;7(5):735-42.

BackgroundAlthough most research on patients with acute heart failure syndrome (AHFS) has focused on readmissions, this may provide an incomplete picture of health-care utilization. We examined the proportion and characteristics of patients with frequent emergency department (ED) visits for AHFS and associated health-care utilization.Methods And ResultsA retrospective cohort study of adults with at least 1 ED visit for AHFS between 2010 and 2011 was performed, derived from population-based multipayer data of state ED and inpatient databases for 2 large and diverse states, California and Florida. The analytic sample comprised 113 033 patients with 175 491 ED visits for AHFS. During the 1-year follow-up period, 30.8% of patients had ≥2 (frequent) visits, accounting for 55.4% (95% confidence interval, 55.2-55.5%) of all ED visits for AHFS. In the multivariable model, significant predictors of frequent ED visits were non-Hispanic black race, Hispanic ethnicity, Medicaid insurance, and lower median household income (all P<0.001). At the visit level, patients with frequent ED visits accounted for 55.0% (95% confidence interval, 54.8-5.3%) of all AHFS hospitalizations via ED. Total charges for AHFS were $3.08 billion (95% confidence interval, $3.03-3.14 billion) in Florida alone; patients with frequent ED visits accounted for 53.3% of total charges (95% confidence interval, 53.2-53.3%).ConclusionsIn this large cohort study, we found that one third (31%) of ED patients with AHFS had frequent ED visits for this condition and that minority race/ethnicity and lower socioeconomic status were associated with frequent ED visits. Individuals with frequent ED visits accounted for the majority of ED visits, hospitalizations, and hospital charges.© 2014 American Heart Association, Inc.

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