Health Care Utilization Outpaces Pre-Pandemic Levels in Early 2024

  • Sep 06, 2024

    In the first quarter of 2024, annual growth in health care spending exceeded the levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet hospital inpatient admissions, on a per capita basis, remained lower than pre-pandemic levels, reflecting a shift to outpatient centers, according to a recent Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker analysis.

    As many elective hospitalizations were canceled or delayed at the beginning of the pandemic, health care spending dipped in late 2019 and early 2020. Shortly after that, year-over-year growth in health services spending rebounded to pre-pandemic levels and remained high, with double-digit growth since early 2023. Nursing and residential care facilities spending saw year-over-year growth ranging from 10.0% to 13.4% since the beginning of 2023.

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    © 2024 MMIT
  • Jinghong Chen

    Jinghong has been producing infographics and data stories on employer-sponsored insurance, public health insurance programs and prescription drug coverage for AIS Health’s Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits since 2018. She also manages AIS Health’s annual executive compensation database for top insurers and Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliates. Before joining AIS Health, she interned at WBEZ, Al Jazeera English and The New York Times Chinese. She graduated from Missouri School of Journalism with a focus on data journalism and international reporting.

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