Abstract
Background: Kentucky is one of the largest rural resettlement areas for refugees in the US welcoming more than 3,000 refugees and other entrants during 2015. Refugees arrive with a number of chronic health conditions that require ongoing management in a healthcare system where they lack knowledge and ability to navigate. This may encourage them to seek care that is easy to access but episodic and fragmented. The objective of this study was to determine the frequency and reasons for accessing care via a local emergency department by resettling refugees during their first twelve months of resettlement.
Highlights
Kentucky is one of the largest rural resettlement areas for refugees in the US welcoming more than 3,000 refugees and other entrants during 2015
The aims included: 1) determination of reasons for care access; 2) days of the week and time care was accessed; and 3) if the reasons for Emergency Department (ED) care access could have been provided in a primary care setting. This was an ancillary study including data maintained in the Arriving Refugee Informatics Surveillance and Epidemiology (ARIVE) database in the University of Louisville Global Health Center (UL-GHC) as well as data collected from the University of Louisville Hospital (ULH) ED
1 PM 2 PM 3 PM 4 PM 5 PM 6 PM 7 PM 8 PM 9 PM 10 PM 11 PM. This is the first study to evaluate care access through an ED among newly arriving refugees in a single US community. These findings indicated that refugees seek care through the ED, some prior to their domestic health screening
Summary
Kentucky is one of the largest rural resettlement areas for refugees in the US welcoming more than 3,000 refugees and other entrants during 2015. Refugees arrive with a number of chronic health conditions that require ongoing management in a healthcare system where they lack knowledge and ability to navigate This may encourage them to seek care that is easy to access but episodic and fragmented. Refugees may need to access healthcare prior to that domestic health screen and their abilities to identify a provider outside of an emergency or urgent care setting may be non-existent. This supports episodic and fragmented care coupled with an already overburdened healthcare system. This is a piece of information that is necessary to inform a care model beneficial to the refugee population
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