US Counties With the Highest Emergency Room Visits per 1,000 Medicare Enrollees

3,141 US counties ranked by emergency room visits per 1,000 Medicare enrollees, from highest to lowest. First are Hardin County, IL (1,535), Wolfe County, KY (1,088) and Franklin County, KY (1,020). The middle one of the 3,141 has 601.

What this measures

Emergency room visits in a year for every 1,000 people in traditional Medicare. It counts visits that ended with a hospital stay and visits where the patient went home. It leaves out people in private Medicare Advantage plans. Source: CMS Medicare Geographic Variation Public Use File.

For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.

The 100 highest counties

Every state, highest first

Each state’s own published figure, not an average of its counties.

More on emergency room visits per 1,000 Medicare enrollees

• US Counties With the Lowest Emergency Room Visits per 1,000 Medicare Enrollees
• Emergency room visits per 1,000 Medicare enrollees by US county: map by year and what it goes with

A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.