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. 2021 Dec 1;37(12):e1128-e1132.
doi: 10.1097/PEC.0000000000001924.

Reliance on Acute Care Settings for Health Care Utilization: A Comparison of Adolescents With Younger Children

Monika K Goyal  1 , Troy Richardson  2 , Abbey Masonbrink  3 , Jennifer L Reed, Elizabeth R Alpern  4 , Matt Hall  2 , Mark I Neuman  5
Affiliations

Reliance on Acute Care Settings for Health Care Utilization: A Comparison of Adolescents With Younger Children

Monika K Goyal et al. Pediatr Emerg Care. .

Abstract

Objective: Because a goal of the Affordable Care Act was to increase preventive care and reduce high-cost care, the objective of this study was to evaluate current health care use and reliance on acute care settings among Medicaid-enrolled children.

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of the 2015 Truven Marketscan Medicaid claims database among children 0 to 21 years old with at least 11 months of continuous enrollment. We calculated adjusted probabilities of health care use (any health care use and ≥1 health maintenance visit) and high acute care reliance (ratio of emergency department or urgent care visits to all health care visits >0.33) by age and compared use between adolescents and younger children using multivariable logistic regression.

Results: Of the 5,182,540 Medicaid-enrolled children, 18.9% had no health care visits and 47.3% had 1 or more health maintenance visit in 2015. Both health care use and health maintenance visits decreased with increasing age (P < 0.001). Compared with younger children (0-10 years old), adolescents were more likely to have no interaction with the health care system [adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 2.20; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.19-2.21] and less likely to have health maintenance visits (aOR, 0.40; 0.39-0.40). High acute care reliance was associated with increasing age, with adolescents having greater odds of high acute care reliance (aOR, 1.08; 1.08-1.09).

Conclusions: Medicaid-enrolled adolescents have low rates of health care use and have high reliance on acute care settings. Further investigation into adolescent-specific barriers to health maintenance care and drivers for acute care is warranted.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Flow Diagram of Study Population
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. Healthcare Utilization and Acute Care Reliance by Age
*adjusted for gender, race/ethnicity, pay arrangement, and presence of chronic condition
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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