Calculating an ED's profitability depends on your assumptions.
Hospital administrators and emergency department (ED) leaders often differ in their valuation of revenues and costs related to emergency care. Two recent studies help shed some light on the controversy.
Investigators from Boston report that, on average, U.S. EDs are profitable — to the tune of $6.1 billion in 2009, with a profit margin of 7.8%. The costs of operating an ED were calculated from information hospitals report on Medicare Worksheet C. The investigators estimate that if the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented, the profit margin will increase to 11.7% by the year 2023.
Another group of investigators compared profit by type of insurance and billing level (level 1 to 5, corresponding to complexity of decision-making and treatment…
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DisclosuresConsultant/Advisory BoardPortola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Speaker’s BureauPeerView Institute for Medical Education
Grant/Research SupportAgency for Healthcare Research and Quality; CDC; NIH–National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences; NIH–National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); NIH–NIAID–Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group; Merck; Pfizer; Boehringer-Ingelheim; Shire; Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Novartis; bioMérieux; Siemens; Rapid Pathogen Screening; Magnolia; Stago; Innovative Biosensors; Molecular Detection, Inc.; Dyax Corp.; Trius Pharmaceuticals
DisclosuresConsultant/Advisory BoardPortola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Speaker’s BureauPeerView Institute for Medical Education
Grant/Research SupportAgency for Healthcare Research and Quality; CDC; NIH–National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences; NIH–National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); NIH–NIAID–Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group; Merck; Pfizer; Boehringer-Ingelheim; Shire; Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Novartis; bioMérieux; Siemens; Rapid Pathogen Screening; Magnolia; Stago; Innovative Biosensors; Molecular Detection, Inc.; Dyax Corp.; Trius Pharmaceuticals