Emergency Department Visits by Patients aged 45 and over with Diabetes: United States, 2015

Questions for Pinyao Rui, Statistician and Author of, “Emergency Department Visits by Patients aged 45 and over with Diabetes: United States, 2015.”

Q: Why did you decide to examine emergency department (ED) visits made by patients aged 45 years older with diabetes?

PR: We decided to examine emergency department visits made by patients aged 45 years and older because we wanted to focus on visits made by older patients who are at higher risk of developing or having diabetes and who comprise a majority of all diabetes cases in the U.S.  Additionally, we wanted to use more recent data not currently available in the literature to examine characteristics of an ED visit for a condition that is projected to rise and contribute to increasing burden of medical care systems.

Q: How did the rate of emergency department visits by patients aged 45 and over with diabetes change with age?

PR: The rate of emergency department visits by patients aged 45 and over increased with age. The rate increased from 69 per 1,000 persons for those aged 45-64 years and more than doubled to 164 per 1,000 persons for those aged 75 years and over.

Q: Were there differences in the percentage of visits that ended in inpatient hospital admission by diabetes status?

PR: Yes, the percentage of ED visits with diabetes that ended in inpatient hospital admission was significantly higher than the percentage of ED visits without diabetes among visits made by patients aged 45-64 and 65 and over.

Q: Are there any findings that surprised you from this report?

PR: One finding from the report that surprised me was that among ED visits made by 45-64 year olds, a higher proportion of diabetes visits were paid by Medicare compared with visits made by patients without diabetes (24% versus 14%).

Q: What is the take home message in this report?

PR: I think the take home message is that the percentage of ED visits by older patients with diabetes reported in the medical record has been increasing in recent years with the highest proportion observed in patients aged 65-74 (32% in 2015).