Table 3.

A comparison of health resource utilization in subjects with various degrees of emergency department utilization.

		ED utilization (number of visits)
Variables	None (n=499)	1–2 (n=230)	≥3 (n=78)	p Value
Outpatient
Visited a general MD at least once in past yr, %	76.2	84.8	82.1	0.023
Visited a rheumatologist at least once in past yr, %	80.1	77.7	80.8	0.728
Rheumatologist was main doctor managing SLE,%	74.9	71.7	70.5	0.532
Number of visits to a general MD in past yr	3.3 (3.7)	5.2 (8.0)	8.3 (9.8)	<0.001
Number of visits to a rheumatologist in past yr	3.5 (3.5)	3.7 (3.7)	5.2 (6.9)	0.002
Number of visits to any specialist in past yr	10.8 (9.1)	14.0 (12.5)	18.7 (17.7)	<0.001
Inpatient
Hospitalized at least once in past yr , %	8.8	33.9	61.0	<0.001
Total number of hospital admissions in past yr	0.1 (0.3)	0.4 (0.7)	1.4 (1.7)	<0.001
Total number of nights is hospital in past yr	0.4 (2.0)	2.9 (8.3)	7.5 (15.4)	<0.001