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. 2019 Jan-Dec:56:46958019896907.
doi: 10.1177/0046958019896907.

Self-Reported Hearing Loss in Older Adults Is Associated With Higher Emergency Department Visits and Medical Costs

Timothy S Wells  1 , Lizi Wu  1 , Gandhi R Bhattarai  2 , Lorraine D Nickels  3 , Steven R Rush  3 , Charlotte S Yeh  4
Affiliations

Self-Reported Hearing Loss in Older Adults Is Associated With Higher Emergency Department Visits and Medical Costs

Timothy S Wells et al. Inquiry. 2019 Jan-Dec.

Abstract

Hearing loss is common among older adults. Thus, it was of interest to explore differences in health care utilization and costs associated with hearing loss and hearing aid use. Hearing loss and hearing aid use were assessed through self-reports and included 5 categories: no hearing loss, aided mild, unaided mild, aided severe, and unaided severe hearing loss. Health care utilization and costs were obtained from medical claims. Those with aided mild or severe hearing loss were significantly more likely to have an emergency department visit. Conversely, those with aided severe hearing loss were about 15% less likely to be hospitalized. Individuals with unaided severe hearing loss had the highest annual medical costs ($14349) compared with those with no hearing loss ($12118, P < .001). In this study, those with unaided severe hearing loss had the highest medical costs. Further studies should attempt to better understand the relationship between hearing loss, hearing aid use, and medical costs.

Keywords: Medicare; cross-sectional survey; health care costs; hearing aids; hearing loss; older adults.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: T.S.W., L.D.N., S.R.R., L.W., and G.R.B. are all employed by UnitedHealth Group and have stock with UnitedHealth Group. C.S.Y. is employed by AARP Services, Inc. However, their compensation was not dependent upon the results obtained in this research, and the investigators retained full independence in the conduct of this research.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations for the 4 categories of hearing loss (HL) with no HL as the reference category.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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