Mental health-related ED visits by kids rising in Colorado

One-quarter of Colorado’s mental health-related emergency department visits were for children in 2018, a new report has found.

The share of children’s ER visits where mental health was the primary diagnosis grew from 21% in 2016 to 25% in 2018, according to an analysis performed by the Center for Improving Value in Health Care using claims data for commercially insured, Medicaid and Medicare Advantage patients. Those visits for adults dropped from 79% to 75% in that time.

The center’s data include nearly 4,300 mental health-related ER claims for kids in 2018, compared with about 12,700 for adults. That’s compared with about 4,100 such visits for kids in 2016 and about 15,000 for adults that year.

Overall, mental health ER visits made up 1.5% of the total visits from 2016 and 2018, the center found. That number may be lower than previous analyses because it excludes visits where a mental illness was the secondary diagnosis. It also excluded substance abuse diagnoses. Between 2007 and 2011, about 1 in 8 ER visits involved mental health and substance use disorders, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.