A Matter of Urgency: Reducing Emergency Department Overuse

The overuse of U.S. emergency departments (EDs) is responsible for $38 billion in wasteful spending each year. Given the tremendous opportunity to lower health care costs by addressing this problem, NEHI launched an initiative to examine ED overuse in detail. Through this initiative, NEHI has identified the key factors driving this costly ED overuse, including who overuses the ED, what causes ED overuse and what can be done to reduce it.