Estimated reimbursement impact of COVID-19 on emergency physicians

© 2023 The Authors. Academic Emergency Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Academic Emergency Medicine..

BACKGROUND: The delivery and financing of health care services were altered in unprecedented ways by COVID-19 and subsequent policy responses. We estimated reimbursement losses to emergency physicians in 2020 compared to 2019 related to shifting acute care utilization during COVID-19.

METHODS: This was an observational analysis of the Clinical Emergency Department Registry (CEDR) and the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS). Study sample included all ED visits from a sample of 214 emergency department (ED) sites in the CEDR in 2019 and 2020 as well as all ED visits in the NEDS in 2019. We identified level of service billing code for evaluation and management (E&M) services, insurance payer, and geographic location of ED visits across sites in the CEDR and linked these to fee schedules to estimate total professional reimbursement across sites. Our primary analysis was to estimate reimbursement in 2020 compared to 2019 across the CEDR sites. In our secondary analysis, we linked sites in the CEDR to those in NEDS to estimate nationwide reimbursement.

RESULTS: Total E&M reimbursement for emergency physicians in the CEDR was $1.6 billion in 2019 and $1.3 billion in 2020, reflecting a 19.7% decline year over year ($308 million loss). In our secondary analysis, we estimate nationwide losses of $6.6 billion, a -19.4% decline year over year. If emergency physicians had received maximum allowable federal relief funds via CARES Act Phases 1 to 3 (2% of 2019 revenue) this would sum to $680 million (2% of the $34 billion) or 10.3% of the estimated $6.6 billion pandemic-related losses.

CONCLUSIONS: Our analyses provide an estimate of the scale of economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings warrant consideration for policymaker relief and future redesign of emergency care financing. Ultimately, the COVID-19 pandemic likely expanded known cracks in the financing of health care into steep fault lines.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2023

Erschienen:

2023

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:30

Enthalten in:

Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine - 30(2023), 6 vom: 16. Juni, Seite 636-643

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Venkatesh, Arjun K [VerfasserIn]
Janke, Alexander T [VerfasserIn]
Koski-Vacirca, Ryan [VerfasserIn]
Rothenberg, Craig [VerfasserIn]
Parwani, Vivek [VerfasserIn]
Granovsky, Mike A [VerfasserIn]
Burke, Laura G [VerfasserIn]
Li, Shu-Xia [VerfasserIn]
Pines, Jesse M [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Journal Article
Observational Study
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 07.06.2023

Date Revised 14.06.2023

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1111/acem.14700

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM353267244