There is increasing demand for outpatient services at the same time as some inpatient services become a persistent drag on hospital margins, a new report shows.
Outpatient revenue jumped 11.6% in August from July and was up 10% compared to the same month last year, according to an Oct. 26 Strata and Syntellis Performance Trends report.
Orthopedic care in the different settings illustrates the gap, the report said.
While outpatient volumes were 33 times higher for such services in May than inpatient care, and gained a small margin, similar inpatient services on average lost $3,630 per patient visit.
Overall, outpatient orthopedic volumes for the average health system rose 29.9% from January 2022 to total 484,857 per month in May 2023. By contrast, inpatient orthopedic volumes increased to 14,304 in May 2023.
The data used in the report comes from more than 2,000 hospitals and 135,000 physicians across the country.