Military Health System reveals fewer than 3% of members had CKD in 2015
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In a cohort of more than 3.3 million patients in the Military Health System, 2.9% were diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, according to data published in Kidney Medicine.
Further, older age and Black race correlated with a higher risk for CKD.
“Studies of databases from health care systems provide insight on the impact of CKD on various populations,” James D. Oliver III, MD, PhD, from the nephrology service department of medicine at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, and colleagues wrote. “We examined CKD in the U.S. Department of Defense Military Health System (MHS), which provides universal coverage to a large, diverse population with characteristics similar to that of the general U.S. population.”
In a retrospective cross-sectional study, researchers examined CKD prevalence among an average yearly sample of 3,285,348 patients in the MHS Data Repository. Patients included active-duty military, retirees and dependents. Researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis of demographic and claims-based data for each fiscal year between 2006 and 2015.
Among the 3,344,420 patients (mean age was 38 years; 44.7% were women; 46.6% were white; 12.7% were Black; 43.2% were active duty; 79.1% were enlisted or dependents) in the MHS during 2015, 2.9% had a diagnosis of CKD. Analyses revealed older age, Black race and senior enlisted rank correlated with higher risk of CKD. Similarly, women and active-duty status were associated with lower risk.
“The MHS’ patient population, delivery systems, and quality of care parallel those found in private sector health systems in the U.S. Thus, our findings are likely generalizable to the U.S. patient population at large,” Oliver and colleagues wrote. They added, “When compared to other large claims databases reported in the U.S. Renal Data System, the MHS crude CKD prevalence of 2.9% was lower than that reported from the Medicare 5% sample (13.8%) and higher than from Optum Clinformatics (1.7%).”
Limitations of the study include the use of ICD-9 coding to determine CKD diagnoses.
“The MHS Data Repository is a valuable resource that can be leveraged to further explore quality of care metrics, such as the Health People 2030 objectives, and for tracking outcomes, such as kidney failure incidence rates, morbidity and mortality rates, in a distinct global health care system,” Oliver and colleagues concluded.
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