Abstract
BackgroundHealth services utilization by Veterans following release may be different than the general population as the result of occupational conditions, requirements and injuries. This study provides the first longitudinal overview of Canadian Veteran healthcare utilization in the Ontario public health system.MethodsThis is a retrospective cohort study designed to use Ontario’s provincial healthcare data to study the demographics and healthcare utilization of Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) & RCMP Veterans living in Ontario. Veterans were eligible for the study if they released between January 1, 1990 and March 31, 2013. Databases at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences were linked by a unique identifier to study non-mental health related hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and physician visits. Overall and age-stratified descriptive statistics were calculated in five-year intervals following the date of release.ResultsThe cohort is comprised of 23, 818 CAF or RCMP Veterans. Following entry into the provincial healthcare system, 82.6 % (95 % CI 82.1–83.1) of Veterans saw their family physician at least once over the first five years following release, 60.7 % (95 % CI 60.0–61.3) saw a non-mental health specialist, 40.8 % (95 % CI 40.2–41.5) went to the emergency department in that same time period and 9.9 % (9.5–10.3) were hospitalized for non-mental health related complaints. Patterns of non-mental health services utilization appeared to be time and service dependant. Stratifying health services utilization by age of the Veteran at entry into the provincial healthcare system revealed significant differences in service use and intensity.ConclusionThis study provides the first description of health services utilization by Veterans, following release from the CAF or RCMP. This work will inform the planning and delivery of support to Veterans in Ontario.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1596-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Health services utilization by Veterans following release may be different than the general population as the result of occupational conditions, requirements and injuries
The cohort is comprised of 23, 818 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) or Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Veterans who lived in Ontario and provided documentation of their service history when applying for an Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) card (n excluded = 3,955) (Fig. 1)
This study provides the first description of the of the public health services utilization of a cohort of Canadian Veterans living in Ontario
Summary
Health services utilization by Veterans following release may be different than the general population as the result of occupational conditions, requirements and injuries. The Life After Service Studies from VAC concluded that Canadian Veterans have a higher prevalence of many self-reported chronic health conditions than the general population [4]. Patterns of health services utilization related to these high rates of medical problems in Canadian Veterans have not been previously described or been available for study. This information is needed to understand the transition to civilian life that includes accessing healthcare in a civilian health care system, and to plan future health services use
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