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Alcohol-Related Emergency Department Encounters in California

In 2021, over 630,000 Emergency Department Visits and Admits were alcohol-related, 5 percent out of nearly 13 million total encounters.

Why Look at Alcohol-Related Emergency Department Encounters?

Excessive alcohol consumption can result in serious health conditions, such as heart attack, high blood pressure, cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, stroke, and injuries. These alcohol-related diseases, accidents, and injuries increase the burden on emergency departments (ED).

HCAI examined both types of ED encounters: (1) “ED Visits” where a patient was treated for an alcohol-related episode and then released and (2) “ED Admissions” where a patient was seen in the ED and directly admitted to that hospital for inpatient care.  Acute alcohol-related episodes are a result of rapid, excessive alcohol consumption. Chronic alcohol-related conditions are those that are a result of prolonged overuse of alcohol, such as stroke, liver disease, and digestive problems.

The visualizations below present patient information on alcohol-related ED visits and ED admissions for 2021 by age, assigned sex at birth, race/ethnicity, and expected payer. 

Key Findings

  • In 2021, there were 637,515 alcohol-related ED visits and admissions, representing 5 percent of all ED visits and admissions. ED admissions were more likely to be for chronic alcohol-related conditions (72.5 percent) than for acute or co-occurring acute and chronic episodes (27.5 percent). Acute alcohol episodes represent a larger proportion of ED visits (40.6 percent), than ED admissions (16.7 percent).
  • Patients who were ages 40 to 59 had the most alcohol-related ED encounters overall (39 percent).
  • For chronic alcohol-related conditions, patients over 60 years of age had the most ED Admissions (47.8 percent) but patients 40-59 (39.6 percent) had the most ED Visits.
  • Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of all alcohol-related encounters were males.
  • Whites and Hispanics each account for 40.9 percent of ED Visits and ED Admissions for chronic alcohol-related conditions.  These two race groups accounted for over 80 percent of all encounters.
  • Medi-Cal was the expected payer for more alcohol-related ED Visits and ED Admissions than any other payer (44.3 percent), followed by Medicare (24.4 percent), Private Coverage (22.2 percent), Self-Pay (6.5 percent), and Other (2.6 percent).  When comparing to 2020 data, private coverage increased slightly from 21.1 percent to 22.2 percent, and self-pay decreased slightly from 7.5 percent to 6.5 percent.

Notes: Unknown sex and age is not included.

*Other Race/Ethnicity includes Multi-racial, other, unknown, invalid, and missing.

HCAI Topic AreaMeasure
Cost TransparencyCTRx product
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How HCAI Created This Product

HCAI identified encounters in the 2021 Emergency Department Data with at least one Acute Alcohol-related Episode or Chronic Alcohol-related Condition using the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM). These codes were based on an article “Trends in Alcohol-Related Emergency Department Visits in the United States: Results from the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, 2006 to 2014” by Aaron M. White, et al. (2018). These encounters were grouped into three groups: (1) Acute Alcohol-related episode, (2) Chronic Alcohol-related condition, and (3) Co-occurring Acute & Chronic Alcohol-related condition.

View Underlying Data

Additional Information

Topic: Healthcare Utilization
Source: Healthcare Utilization – Patient-Level Administrative Data
Citation: HCAI – Emergency Department Data, Inpatient Discharges – Alcohol-related ED Utilization, 2021
Temporal Coverage: 2021
Spatial/Geographic Coverage: Statewide
Frequency: Annual