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Study: Patients with Medicaid have increased urgent care usage in Oregon
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Adults covered under Oregon’s Medicaid use emergency care services 40% more often than adults who are in similar circumstances but are without health insurance, according to a recently published study.
“We find increases in emergency department visits across a broad range of types of visits, conditions and subgroups, including increases in visits for conditions that may be most readily treatable in primary care settings,” Sarah Taubman, ScD, and colleagues wrote in the study.
The study, which made use of Oregon’s lottery system for Medicaid access, examined emergency room records for more than 25,000 patients during an 18-month period. Oregon instituted a lottery system in 2008 when the state had Medicaid funds to cover an additional 10,000 low-income adults. Roughly 90,000 Oregonians applied for one of the 10,000 slots. Researchers found that Medicaid coverage increased the overall emergency use by 0.41 visits per person compared with the average of 1.02 visits per person for adults without health insurance.
Coauthor Amy Finkelstein, PhD noted that her group’s take on the matter is unique.
“It is not that we are the first to look at the effects of Medicaid empirically, but we are the first to have a randomized controlled trial of the effect of covering the uninsured with Medicaid,” Finkelstein said.
Reference:
Taubman S. Science. 2014;doi:10.1126/science.1246183
Disclosures: The authors have no relevant financial disclosures.