The Emergency Department as a Pathway to Admission for Poor and High-Cost Patients

--Our data indicate that patients with lower socioeconomic status are more likely than other patients to use the emergency department as their means of access to the hospital and that patients admitted via the emergency department use far more resources than patients in the same diagnosis related group admitted by other means. Hospitals that make emergency department services more available may be more likely to hospitalize socioeconomically disadvantaged patients and may be at a substantial financial disadvantage under per-case reimbursement systems such as Medicare.