Old Problem, New Resource: Medicaid in the New Statewide Emergency Department Dataset

Goals: Excessive emergency department (ED) use creates a cost burden for Medicaid that has resisted decades of state policy interventions. Prior analysis has been limited by the lack of data supporting a comparison of Medicaid and non-Medicaid beneficiaries' ED use. For the first time, Kentucky has year's worth of statewide ED data for all payment sources and facilities. We propose to use this new resource to shed light on the major issues in Medicaid ED use. Examples of the questions we will address are variation in the proportion of ED use for non-emergency conditions by coverage status, county of residence, and underlying conditions or comorbidities.