Ohio hospitals, emergency rooms see large increase in visits

According to new information from the Ohio Hospital Association (OHA), there were more than 34 million inpatient and outpatient visits to Ohio hospitals in 2006, an increase of nearly 13% in the past five years. (Source: "Different Hospitals, Different Doorways, Constant Care," Health Beat, Feb. 28, 2008, Ohio Hospital Association.) Outpatient visits drove the increase, but 1.5 million visits were serious enough to require hospital admission (with Ohioans receiving inpatient hospital care for a total of 7.7 million days).

Hospital emergency departments are also saw an sharp increase in patients with 5.7 million visits in 2006. This represents a 13.6% increase over 2003. Of these visit to the emergency rooms in 2006, 933,000 were from patients without insurance coverage--even though only 8% of these uninsured patients had a serious enough medical condition to require an observation bed or admittance to the hospital. According to the OHA, this shows that hospital emergency departments are being used as a major source of general health care services for Ohio's uninsured, who have limited access to other sources of health care.