BackgroundThe purpose of our investigation is to analyze if emergency epidemiology is randomly variable or predictable. If emergency admissions show a predictable pattern, we can use it for multiple planning purposes, especially defining competence needs for duty roster personnel.MethodAn observational study of consecutive emergency admissions at Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen over six years. We extracted the discharge diagnoses from our electronic patient record and sorted the patients by diagnoses and frequency. Data were loaded into a Jupyter notebook and presented in form of frequency diagrams.The study population, 213,801 patients, comprises all emergency admissions in need of secondary emergency care from the relevant specialities in the catchment area of our hospital in the western health region of Norway. Patients in need of tertiary care from the whole region are also included.ResultsOur analysis shows an annually reproducible distribution pattern regarding type and number of patients. The pattern adhere to an exponential curve that is stable from year to year. An exponential distribution pattern also applies when we sort patients according to the capital letters groups in the ICD 10 system. The same applies if patients are sorted adhering to primarily surgical or medical diagnoses.ConclusionAnalysis of the emergency epidemiology of all admitted emergency patients in a defined geographical area gives a solid basis for defining competence needs for duty roster work.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12245-023-00515-y.