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Earlier this month, shares of big health insurance companies fell after UnitedHealth Group warned that healthcare utilization rates were up. At a conference the company had said that it was seeing a higher-than-expected pace of hip replacements, knee surgeries and other elective procedures. In a new note out this week, UBS analysts offer a surprising theory about one factor that could be driving a higher pace of injuries: pickleball.
In total, we estimate 67k ED visits, 366k outpatient visits, 8.8k outpatient surgeries, 4.7k hospitalizations, and 20k post-acute episodes. We then use the nature of pickleball injuries and care setting to inform our estimates of unit pricing. All said, we estimate $377 mn of medical costs related to pickleball of which $302 mn (80%) is attributable to the outpatient setting and $75 mn (20%) is attributable to the inpatient setting.
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