Abstract
voidable visits to hospital emergency departments (EDs) have long been a significant contributing factor to steadily rising U.S. healthcare costs. Low-income Medicaid beneficiaries are particularly likely to visit EDs to treat minor conditions, since primary and outpatient care are often inaccessible to them. My thesis uses a clinical algorithm and regression analysis to study exactly how prevalent Medicaid patients have been in EDs for avoidable visits on a national-level over a 17-year period from 2002 to 2018. The results indicate that a significant proportion of Medicaid ED visits can be classified as “nonemergent” or “avoidable” and that Medicaid status significantly increases the likelihood of avoidable visits to EDs, with stronger effects during periods of increased Medicaid enrollment.