Emergency Department Out-of-Pocket Expenditures by Insurance, 1999 to 2016

Per visit, emergency department (ED) expenditures have increased more for private insurance than Medicare and Medicaid during the past 20 years, but it is unknown whether ED out-of-pocket expenditures show a similar pattern of increase. We compare increases in per-visit ED out-of-pocket expenditures over time for visits that did not result in hospitalization or observation admissions for private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid.

This repeated cross-sectional analysis of out-of-pocket expenditures used data from the 1999 to 2016 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a nationally representative survey of the noninstitutionalized US civilian population. We used 2-part models-logistic regression followed by a generalized linear model with a γ distribution and a log link function-to compare per-visit out-of-pocket expenditures over time among different payers. Models contained insurance type, year, an interaction between year and insurance type, region of country, sex, and 5 visit-level variables (magnetic resonance imaging/computed tomography scans, ultrasonography, surgical procedures, radiographs, and ECGs).

In our sample of 107,519 ED visits, mean annual per-visit out-of-pocket expenditures increased $7.31 a year (95% confidence interval $6.22 to $8.41) for private insurance and did not increase for Medicare or Medicaid. Most private insurance and Medicare visits had out-of-pocket expenditures less than $100 and nearly all Medicaid visits had no out-of-pocket expenditures. There was no strong evidence suggesting that out-of-pocket expenditures at different total expenditure amounts increased appreciably for private insurance.

Per-visit out-of-pocket expenditure increases for private insurance ED visits were predominantly related to overall increases in per-visit total expenditure.