Hospital admissions following emergency medical services in Germany: analysis of 2 million hospital cases in 2022

The use of emergency medical services (EMS) in Germany has increased substantially over the last few decades. While current reform efforts aim to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the German hospital and EMS systems, there is lack of data on characteristics of hospital cases using EMS. To analyze and compare the characteristics of cases hospitalized with and without the use of EMS. The BARMER health insurance data on more than 2 million hospital cases admitted in 2022 were analyzed. The distributions of age, clinical complexity (measured by patient clinical complexity levels, PCCL), main diagnoses, costs for EMS and hospital treatment, and multiple severity indicators were described. The overall severity of hospital cases was classified as “low or moderate” or “high” based on a combined severity indicator. All analyses were stratified by use of EMS and EMS type. A total of 28