ArticleCMAJ open
Characteristics of frequent emergency department users in British Columbia, Canada: a retrospective analysis.
Article in CMAJ open. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Frequent emergency department users in Finnish public healthcare - a nationwide registry-based study.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Hospital at home for older frequent hospital users: present and future of a healthcare challenge.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2026Article
- A sex- and gender-based analysis plus of frequent healthcare utilization among individuals living with chronic pain: a cohort study.BMC health services research · 2025Article
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- Characteristics of emergency department visits in Jordanian public hospitals.International journal of emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Phenotyping Healthcare Use 2-3 Decades Before the First Multiple Sclerosis Demyelinating Event.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2025Article
- Implementation of Telemedicine for Patients Referred to Emergency Medical Services.Epidemiologia (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Frequent callers contacting the Norwegian national emergency medical number 113: a retrospective study.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Reasons for High Emergency Department Use Among Patients With Common Mental Disorders or Substance-Related Disorders.Healthcare policy = Politiques de sante · 2024Article
- Transitions in health care settings for frequent and infrequent users of emergency departments: a population-based retrospective cohort study.BMC health services research · 2023Article
- Emergency department use by persons with MS: A population-based descriptive study with a focus on infection-related visits.Multiple sclerosis (Houndmills, Basingstoke, England) · 2022Article
- Associations between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Emergency Department Utilization in an Adult Medicaid Population.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Factors Associated with Emergency Department Visits and Consequent Hospitalization and Death in Korea Using a Population-Based National Health Database.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Characterizing people with frequent emergency department visits and substance use: a retrospective cohort study of linked administrative data in Ontario, Alberta, and B.C., Canada.BMC emergency medicine · 2022Article
- An observational pilot study: Prevalence and cost of high frequency emergency department users at Örebro University Hospital, Sweden.PloS one · 2022Observational
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundFrequent emergency department users disproportionately account for rising health care costs. We aimed to characterize frequent emergency department users in British Columbia, Canada.
methodsWe performed a retrospective analysis using health administrative databases. We included patients aged 18 years or more with at least 1 emergency department visit from 2012/13 to 2015/16, linked to hospital, physician billing, prescription and mortality data. We used annual emergency department visits made by the top 10% of patients to define frequent users (≥ 3 visits/year).
resultsOver the study period, 13.8%-15.3% of patients seen in emergency departments were frequent users. We identified 205 136 frequent users among 1 196 353 emergency department visitors. Frequent users made 40.3% of total visits in 2015/16. From 2012/13 to 2015/16, their visit rates per 100 000 BC population showed a relative increase of 21.8%, versus 13.1% among all emergency department patients. Only 1.8% were frequent users in all study years. Mental illness accounted for 8.2% of visits among those less than 60 years of age, and circulatory or respiratory diagnoses for 13.3% of visits among those aged 60 or more. In 2015/16, frequent users were older and had lower household incomes than nonfrequent users; the sex distribution was similar. Frequent users had more prescriptions (median 9, interquartile range [IQR] 5-14 v. 1, IQR 1-3), primary care visits (median 15, IQR 9-27 v. 7, IQR 4-12) and hospital admissions (median 2, IQR 1-3 v. 1, IQR 1-1), and higher 1-year mortality (10.2% v. 3.5%) than nonfrequent users.
interpretationEmergency department use by frequent users increased in BC between 2012/13 and 2015/16; these patients were heterogenous, had high mortality and rarely remained frequent users over multiple years. Our results suggest that interventions must account for heterogeneity and address triggers of frequent use episodes.
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