CHIA Releases New Report on MA Acute Care Hospital Outpatient Observation Data

DATE: January 27, 2022

The Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) has published a new report on utilization and trends in hospital outpatient observation visits in the Commonwealth in the period leading up to the outbreak of COVID-19. Massachusetts Acute Care Hospital Outpatient Observation Data (FFY 2016-2019) presents key measures of outpatient observation utilization overall and by hospital, patient demographic, and visit characteristics from FFY 2016 to FFY 2019.

Outpatient observation visits are an important component of acute hospital utilization and are classified as a type of outpatient care that can include the assessment of patients who may require additional treatment beyond care in the emergency department, but may not require admission to the inpatient setting.

Key Findings

• In FFY 2019, there were 330,324 total observation visits among Massachusetts acute care hospitals, one-third (114,287) of which resulted in an inpatient admission. 

• Although the number of observation visits has remained relatively stable over the past four years, the proportion of visits associated with behavioral health increased by 20.2%.

• Over half (51.2%) of all observation visits were among non-elderly adults (aged 18-64); elderly adults (65 and older) represented another 40.0% of visits, and children represented 8.8% of visits. 

• The most common expected primary payer type for observation visits was Medicare (42.4%), followed by commercial insurance (27.6%) and Medicaid (22.7%).
  

This is the first annual statewide report on observation visit utilization and part of a new reporting series providing analyses on patterns and trends of acute care hospital services from CHIA’s Case Mix database. In addition to this report, CHIA has published parallel reports on inpatient visits in Massachusetts in December 2020 and a report on emergency department utilization in September 2021. In the future, CHIA will produce data updates on a regular basis for all three settings of care to provide timely access to key analyses from these data as they are submitted and processed by the agency.

This report is also accompanied by a databook and technical appendix.