Following the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, emergency department use fell among young adults ages 19 to 25, who are now able to stay on their parents' plans until age 26, according to a Stanford University study published in Health Affairs.
The researchers compared ED use in a group of 1,000 California, New York and Florida adults ages 19 to 25 to that of the ED use of a control group extracted from state hospital records from between 2009 and 2011.
Compared to the control group, young adults' ED use following implementation of the PPACA dropped 2.7 ED visits per 1,000, or 2.1 percent. This generalized to a 60,000 visit reduction in ED visits among young adults across in the three study states this year as compared to 2011, according to the study. Reductions in ED visits were highest among blacks and women, at 3.4 percent and 3 percent respectively.
At a time when ED visits have been steadily rising for the past decade, the finding is particularly important, according to a report on the findings from Forbes.
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