Medicare Emergency Room Visits per 1,000 Beneficiaries (CMS)

Hospital emergency room visits per 1,000 Original Medicare beneficiaries in Georgia and its counties.

Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicare Geographic Variation - by National, State & County, data.cms.gov dataset 6219697b-8f6c-4164-bed4-cd9317c58ebc, 2014-2024 release (2014-2024 Original Medicare Geographic Variation Public Use File.csv)
Year coverage: 2014–2024
Updated: annual
Version: 1.0.0
Schema hash: 070f9032c0a1

Detail levels available

StateCounty · default

Overview

Hospital emergency room (ER) visits by Original Medicare (fee-for-service) beneficiaries in Georgia and each of its 159 counties, per 1,000 beneficiaries a year, with the visit and beneficiary counts. A visit counts whether the person went home or was admitted. Statewide, 709 visits per 1,000 in 2014 and 564 in 2024; counties ranged from 372 to 873 in 2024. 2014-2024, from CMS's Medicare Geographic Variation public use file. Medicare Advantage members are not counted (60% of Georgia's beneficiaries with Part A and B in 2024).

Row grain: One row per year, county_fips, tract_geoid, age_bracket.

Key metric

er_visits_per_1000_beneficiaries — ER Visits per 1,000 Original Medicare Beneficiaries (rate_per_population)

The single headline value most answers want.

JSON schema →Data contract (YAML) →

Variables

Every column in the fact table. The code is the exact field name the API returns.

Column	Type	Unit	Range	Null?	Description
`year`Year	integer	—	—	no	Calendar year of service (claims by date of service, January to December), 2014-2024 (CMS's 2014-2024 release). Full description▾ Calendar year of service (claims by date of service, January to December), 2014-2024 (CMS's 2014-2024 release).
`county_fips`County FIPS	string	—	—	yes	5-digit county FIPS code of the beneficiaries' residence (CMS BENE_GEO_CD); NULL on the Georgia state row. CMS's GA-UNKNOWN (13000) is left out. Full description▾ 5-digit county FIPS code of the beneficiaries' residence (CMS BENE_GEO_CD); NULL on the Georgia state row. CMS's GA-UNKNOWN (13000) is left out. Joins counties; adds its label columns.
`tract_geoid`Tract GEOID	string	—	—	yes	Always NULL: CMS publishes state and county figures only. Kept for the health domain's standard key shape. Full description▾ Always NULL: CMS publishes state and county figures only. Kept for the health domain's standard key shape. Joins tracts; adds its label columns.
`age_bracket`Age Bracket	string	—	—	no	'all' = every beneficiary; 'under_65' / '65_plus' (Georgia only). Full description▾ Beneficiary age group (CMS BENE_AGE_LVL): 'all' (every age), 'under_65' (entitled by disability or end-stage renal disease) and '65_plus'. CMS publishes the two brackets for Georgia only; county rows are 'all'. The brackets partition 'all': their visits and beneficiaries add up to it exactly and its rate lies between theirs. Pin 'all' to compare places. 3 allowed values▾ `all — total / aggregate` `under_65` `65_plus`
`er_visits_per_1000_beneficiaries`ER Visits per 1,000 Original Medicare Beneficiaries	number	rate_per_population	—	yes	Hospital emergency room visits per 1,000 Original Medicare beneficiaries in the year. Full description▾ Hospital emergency room (ER) visits by the place's Original Medicare (fee-for-service) beneficiaries in the year, per 1,000 of them: num_er_visits x 1,000 / num_om_beneficiaries (CMS ER_VISITS_PER_1000_BENES, as published, 4 decimals; checked against the two counts on every row). Counts visits, not people: a visit counts whether the person went home or was admitted, and each repeat visit counts. Not per 1,000 Medicare enrollees: Medicare Advantage members are not counted. For several counties, pool as SUM(num_er_visits) * 1000.0 / SUM(num_om_beneficiaries), never an average of the county rates.
`num_er_visits`ER Visits	integer	count	—	yes	Hospital emergency room visits by the place's Original Medicare beneficiaries in the year, inpatient or outpatient (CMS BENES_ER_VISITS_CNT: despite its name, a count of visits, not of beneficiaries). The numerator of er_visits_per_1000_beneficiaries. Adds across counties; never add it to medicare_service_utilization's outpatient visits or evaluation and management events, which count the same visits again. Full description▾ Hospital emergency room visits by the place's Original Medicare beneficiaries in the year, inpatient or outpatient (CMS BENES_ER_VISITS_CNT: despite its name, a count of visits, not of beneficiaries). The numerator of er_visits_per_1000_beneficiaries. Adds across counties; never add it to medicare_service_utilization's outpatient visits or evaluation and management events, which count the same visits again.
`num_om_beneficiaries`Original Medicare Beneficiaries	integer	count	—	yes	Original Medicare (fee-for-service) beneficiaries living in the place: Part A, Part B and Original Medicare for every month they were entitled, new enrollees and people who died during the year included (CMS BENES_OM_CNT). Not every Medicare beneficiary: Medicare Advantage enrollees and people with Part A or B alone are left out. The denominator of er_visits_per_1000_beneficiaries. Full description▾ Original Medicare (fee-for-service) beneficiaries living in the place: Part A, Part B and Original Medicare for every month they were entitled, new enrollees and people who died during the year included (CMS BENES_OM_CNT). Not every Medicare beneficiary: Medicare Advantage enrollees and people with Part A or B alone are left out. The denominator of er_visits_per_1000_beneficiaries.

Filters

Query parameters the fact endpoint accepts. Comma-separated values are OR within a parameter; multiple parameters AND together.

Parameter	Kind	Allowed values	Notes
`year`	year_exact	any value	—
`year_min`	year_range	any value	—
`year_max`	year_range	any value	—
`detail`	detail	`countiesstates`	enum-enforced, default: counties
`county_fips`	foreign_key	any value	multi-value
`tract_geoid`	foreign_key	any value	multi-value
`age_bracket`	categorical	`allunder_6565_plus`	multi-value, enum-enforced

Example requests

Run these against the base URL — they return live data.

All rows (first page), counties level

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/health/medicare_er_visits"

counties data for 2024

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/health/medicare_er_visits?year=2024"

Filtered to age_bracket = under_65 for 2024

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/health/medicare_er_visits?year=2024&age_bracket=under_65"

One county (FIPS 13121), 2024

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/health/medicare_er_visits?county_fips=13121&year=2024&detail=counties"

Download 2024 as CSV

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/health/medicare_er_visits?year=2024&format=csv"

Notes & limitations

NULL handling

Suppressed cells (values the source withholds, usually for a group too small to report) are NULL, never zero.
Zero is a real, reported value.

Limitations

Original Medicare (fee-for-service) only: beneficiaries in Original Medicare Parts A and B, counted for each month entitled, not all enrollees. In 2024 those beneficiaries were 35% of Georgia's Medicare beneficiaries and 20-49% of each county's (Medicare Advantage up to 76%, Clayton County), so county figures can describe a fee-for-service minority. Rates count ER visits, not people, per 1,000 of those beneficiaries. Georgia's row is CMS's own figure, not a sum of its counties. Who is covered: CMS counts beneficiaries with Part A, Part B and Original Medicare for every month they were entitled (num_om_beneficiaries), new enrollees and people who died during the year included; anyone in Medicare Advantage at any point in the year, or with Part A or Part B alone, is left out. An ER visit is a hospital emergency room visit whether the person went home or was admitted (CMS counts inpatient and outpatient ER visits); each repeat visit by the same person counts. The same visit can also appear in medicare_service_utilization, as a hospital outpatient visit (if the person went home) and as the ER doctor's evaluation and management event: never add ER visits to those. Georgia's rate fell 20% from 2019 to 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic (687 to 551 per 1,000), and was still below its 2019 level in 2024 (564). Trends also reflect who stays in Original Medicare: beneficiaries under 65 (entitled by disability or end-stage renal disease), whose rate is higher (862 vs 533 per 1,000 at 65 and over in 2024; higher in every year), fell from 20% to 9% of Georgia's Original Medicare beneficiaries between 2014 and 2024, which by itself pulls the all-ages rate down. CMS suppresses figures built on fewer than 11 beneficiaries or service users ('*'); they are NULL here and never filled in from other figures. No served figure is suppressed in this release. CMS's GA-UNKNOWN row (13000), beneficiaries placed in no county, is fully suppressed and left out. Georgia's row is CMS's own figure, not a sum of the county rows: it also counts the handful of beneficiaries CMS places in no county (GA-UNKNOWN), so the 159 counties need not add up to it exactly. age_bracket 'under_65' (beneficiaries entitled by disability or end-stage renal disease) and '65_plus' exist for Georgia only; county rows are 'all'. The two brackets' visits and beneficiaries add up to 'all' exactly. CMS also publishes the share of beneficiaries with at least one ER visit; it counts people, not visits, and is not in this table. From CMS's 2014-2024 release (file updated 2026-04-29); each release restates earlier years, so the figures here are replaced when the data is refreshed. tract_geoid is always NULL.