About One Fifth Of People Hospitalized From An Emergency Department Visit Are Discharged Within 24 Hours

Nationwide, about 41.2% of people visiting a Veterans Administration (VA) emergency department from 2011 through 2019 for chest pain, shortness of breath, or abdominal pain were hospitalized, but about one-fifth (19.4%) of those admitted were discharged within 24 hours. Of all the emergency department visits over the nine-year period, the 30-day mortality rate was 2.5%. According to the cross-sectional nationwide sample of more than 2,000 physicians caring for more than 2 million consumers across 105 VA emergency departments, physician hospitalization rates varied by up to 24 percentage points between physicians with the . . .