Frequency and Trends of Pre-Pandemic Surge Periods in U.S. Emergency Departments, 2006-2019.

OBJECTIVES

To quantify the frequency, outside of the pandemic setting, with which individual healthcare facilities faced surge periods due to severe increases in demand for emergency department (ED) care.

DESIGN

Retrospective cohort study.

SETTING

U.S. EDs.

PATIENTS

All ED encounters in the all-payer, nationally representative Nationwide Emergency Department Sample from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, 2006-2019.

INTERVENTIONS

None.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

Frequency of surge periods defined as ED months in which an individual facility ED saw a greater than 50% increase in ED visits per month above facility-/calendar month-specific medians. During 2006-2019, 3,317 U.S. EDs reported 354,534,229 ED visits across 142,035 ED months. Fifty-seven thousand four hundred ninety-five ED months (40.5%) during the study period had a 0% to 50% increase in ED visits that month above facility-specific medians and 1,952 ED months (1.4%) qualified as surge periods and had a greater than 50% increase in ED visits that month above facility-specific medians. These surge months were experienced by 397 unique facility EDs (12.0%). Compared with 2006, the most proximal pre-pandemic period of 2016-2019 had a notably elevated likelihood of ED-month surge periods (odds ratios [ORs], 2.36-2.84; all < 0.0005). Compared with the calendar month of January, the winter ED months in December through March have similar likelihood of an ED-month qualifying as a surge period (ORs, 0.84-1.03; all > 0.05), while the nonwinter ED months in April through November have a lower likelihood of an ED-month qualifying as a surge period (ORs, 0.65-0.81; all < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Understanding the frequency of surges in demand for ED care-which appear to have increased in frequency even before the COVID-19 pandemic and are concentrated in winter months-is necessary to better understand the burden of potential and realized acute surge events and to inform cost-effectiveness preparedness strategies.