Cardiovascular diagnoses such as chest pain and atherosclerotic heart disease are key drivers of outpatient payments, which accounted for almost 57 percent of hospitals’ net patient revenue in 2017, according to data compiled by Definitive Healthcare.
The healthcare analytics company also tracked ICD-10 diagnosis data from January through June of 2018 and reported the 10 most common outpatient diagnoses as well as those that generated the most total payments.
“Chest pain, unspecified” and “other chest pain” were Nos. 3 and 4 on the total payments list, while stable coronary heart disease ranked No. 7. In a blog post, Definitive Healthcare noted the chest pain ICD codes have seen an increase in total payments over the last three years, moving from the bottom half of the top 10 into the top five revenue-generators.
Here are the outpatient diagnoses which netted hospitals the most payments during the first half of 2018 (physician practices weren’t included):
- Antineoplastic chemotherapy: $6.63 billion
- Antineoplastic immunotherapy: $3.90 billion
- Chest pain, unspecified: $1.61 billion
- Other chest pain: $1.53 billion
- Screening for malignant neoplasm of colon: $1.45 billion
- Antineoplastic radiation therapy: $1.40 billion
- Atherosclerotic heart disease of native coronary artery without angina pectoris: $1.36 billion
- Screening mammogram for malignant neoplasm of breast: $1.10 billion
- Multiple sclerosis: $989 million
- Syncope and collapse: $919 million
Primary hypertension and type 2 diabetes ranked second and fifth on the list of most common diagnoses by volume, racking up 5.4 million and 2.9 million diagnoses during the first half of 2018, respectively. Mammography screenings took the top spot, accounting for 7.9 million outpatient diagnoses.
Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.