Impact of Ridesharing Entry on Hospitals’ Emergency Department (ED) Admissions

In this paper, we examine the impact of information technology (IT)-enabled ridesharing platforms on healthcare demands, specifically at hospitals’ emergency departments (EDs). We consider the rollout of ridesharing platforms over time in distinct locations and analyze changes in Emergency Department (ED) hospital admissions. Employing a difference-in-differences design, we analyze HCUP (Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project) data from the state of Florida, that has patient-level arrival and treatment data for 42 million emergency department patient encounters. We find that the availability of ridesharing services has a positive and significant effect on ED arrivals, indicating enhanced accessibility. To identify the heterogeneous impact of ridesharing, we repeated our analysis in different patient sub-populations. Our results indicate the most significant effect applies to young, middle-aged, low-income, and non-critical patients. Additionally, in a post-hoc analysis, we find a significant increase in ED service time for patients with less critical conditions and no change in length of visit for critical patients. The rise in ED demand due to ridesharing entry can have two distinct implications for emergency departments. On the one hand, ridesharing entry addresses the access barrier when the patient’s condition is non-critical, but ED usage is necessary. This is a positive impact of ridesharing services availability, especially since it helps low-income communities the most. Therefore, hospitals and ridesharing companies can collaborate to address the challenge of healthcare access. On the other hand, ridesharing entry may exacerbate already overcrowded EDs by facilitating non-critical and unnecessary ED usage, which can be an adverse effect. In this case, effective patient triage to identify those with urgent needs may become even more essential after ridesharing entry.