Preventable emergency care generates excess costs for the public, increases provider burden for emergency departments (EDs), and may lower the quality of care for patients. EDs also bear costs associated with responding to sometimes duplicative requests about their data. However, to date there has not been much research in linking individual-level survey data with ED data to evaluate predictors of preventable ED visits, or in leveraging existing ED data to directly fulfill survey data requests. This work analyzes linked Utah Department of Health Emergency Department Encounters (UDOH ED) data and American Community Survey (ACS) data to report about relationships between preventable emergency care and social determinants of health (SDOH). This work also tests the feasibility of using UDOH ED data to replicate National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey Public Use File (NHAMCS PUF) tables. We find that most SDOH tested are significantly associated with preventable emergency care visits in Utah, and 15 of 27 NHAMCS PUF tables are replicable with these Utah ED data. Our findings can support efforts to reduce the extent of preventable emergency care and to boost ED cost effectiveness, perhaps by informing health and healthcare related strategies and/or policies. Our findings can also help with efforts towards reducing NHAMCS respondent burden and cutting costs associated with NHAMCS data collection.

Note about revision: The figures for “all emergency department visits” in this paper have been updated for consistency with the corresponding all-visits figures used in the UDOH dashboard, while leaving unchanged the paper’s main figures and findings.