February 2023 Utilization Report

Looking at the average daily volumes, there is a noted increase in utilization across most hospitals going from January to February 2022. Acute care admissions increased by two percentage points compared to pre-COVID baselines going from -17% in January to -11% in February, while Emergency Department admissions changed from -28% to -24% in the same time period. On the other hand, observation admissions remained consistent at 6% over baseline, and average daily ambulatory surgeries saw the biggest increase in volumes going from -9% below baseline in January to 3% over baseline in February. Average daily psychiatric admissions are the only metric that saw a slight decline in volumes from January to February (see Fig. 1). Digging further, all hospitals except for two saw a decline in psychiatric admissions this month, three of which had their lowest volumes in the past 15 months as presented in Table 7 of the report.