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A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis ranking states according to the number of emergency department (ED) visits found that West Virginia had the highest number of ED visits (596 per 1,000), while Nevada had the fewest (226 per 1,000) in 2023. The organization analyzed the most recent available community hospital data from the 1999-2023 American Hospital Association Annual Survey and compared it to population reports from the Census Bureau. Below are the top 10 states ranked by ED visits per 1,000 residents:
- West Virginia: 596
- North Dakota: 591
- Louisiana: 589
- Mississippi: 567
- Maine: 555
- Ohio: 541
- Indiana: 539
- Kentucky: 514
- Missouri: 511
- District of Columbia: 500
Urgent care is here for you: Urgent care’s value is often equated with its ability to deliver quickly accessible care to lower-acuity patients, thus allowing them to avoid the ED—especially during evening or weekend hours when primary care is typically not available. An analysis of more than 13 million patient encounters from January 1 to March 31, 2024, recorded in the Experity EMR demonstrates the peak visit times in typical urgent care centers vary by hour and day of the week. See all the exclusive data in the JUCM archive: Patient Arrival Times In Urgent Care.