Abstract
BackgroundThere are plenty of studies investigating the disparity of payer status in accessing to care. However, most studies are either disease-specific or cohort-specific. Quantifying the disparity from the level of facility through a large controlled study are rare. This study aims to examine how the payer status affects patient hospitalization from the perspective of a facility.MethodsWe extracted all patients with visiting record in a medical center between 5/1/2009-4/30/2014, and then linked the outpatient and inpatient records three year before target admission time to patients. We conduct a retrospective observational study using a conditional logistic regression methodology. To control the illness of patients with different diseases in training the model, we construct a three-dimension variable with data stratification technology. The model is validated on a dataset distinct from the one used for training.ResultsPatients covered by private insurance or uninsured are less likely to be hospitalized than patients insured by government. For uninsured patients, inequity in access to hospitalization is observed. The value of standardized coefficients indicates that government-sponsored insurance has the greatest impact on improving patients’ hospitalization.ConclusionAttention is needed on improving the access to care for uninsured patients. Also, basic preventive care services should be enhanced, especially for people insured by government. The findings can serve as a baseline from which to measure the anticipated effect of measures to reduce disparity of payer status in hospitalization.
Highlights
There are plenty of studies investigating the disparity of payer status in accessing to care
After the data pre-processing, our study population consisted of 462,809 patients, 67,332 of whom were admitted during the target year
The number of patients insured by a government program is much higher than those with other payer status in our sample, which is consistent with a safety-net health care provider
Summary
There are plenty of studies investigating the disparity of payer status in accessing to care. This study aims to examine how the payer status affects patient hospitalization from the perspective of a facility. Based on their primary insurance payers, patients can be classified into five groups: Medicare, Medicaid, Commercial, Uninsured, and Other, among which Medicare and Medicaid are government administered programs whereas commercial insurance is provided by private insurers. The avoidable hospitalization rate for Medicaid and uninsured patients is higher than privately insured patients [10]. These studies indicate that more attention should be given to low-income patients to improve their access to care
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