scholarly journals Patterns of healthcare utilisation for respiratory complications of adults with neuromuscular disease: a population study

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 1800754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Rose ◽  
Douglas McKim ◽  
David Leasa ◽  
Mika Nonoyama ◽  
Anu Tandon ◽  
...  

Our objective was to quantify health service utilisation including monitoring and treatment of respiratory complications for adults with neuromuscular disease (NMD), identifying practice variation and adherence to guideline recommendations at a population level.We conducted a population-based longitudinal cohort study (2003–2015) of adults with NMD using hospital diagnostic and health insurance billing codes within administrative health databases.We identified 185 586 adults with NMD. Mean age 52 years, 59% female. 41 173 (22%) went to an emergency department for respiratory complications on average 1.6 times every 3 years; 14 947 (8%) individuals were admitted to hospital 1.4 times every 3 years. Outpatient respiratory specialist visits occurred for 64 084 (35%) with four visits every 3 years, although substantial variation in visit frequency was found. 157 285 (85%) went to the emergency department (all-cause) almost 4 times every 3 years, 100 052 (54%) were admitted to hospital. Individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/motor neurone disease (ALS/MND) had more emergency department visits compared with other types of NMD (p<0.0001).One-third of adults with NMD received respiratory specialist care at a frequency recommended by professional guidelines, although substantial variation exists. Emergent healthcare utilisation was substantial, emphasising the burden of NMD on the healthcare system and urgent need to improve community and social supports, particularly for ALS/MND patients.

BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. e043010
Author(s):  
Jane Lyons ◽  
Ashley Akbari ◽  
Fatemeh Torabi ◽  
Gareth I Davies ◽  
Laura North ◽  
...  

IntroductionThe emergence of the novel respiratory SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent COVID-19 pandemic have required rapid assimilation of population-level data to understand and control the spread of infection in the general and vulnerable populations. Rapid analyses are needed to inform policy development and target interventions to at-risk groups to prevent serious health outcomes. We aim to provide an accessible research platform to determine demographic, socioeconomic and clinical risk factors for infection, morbidity and mortality of COVID-19, to measure the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare utilisation and long-term health, and to enable the evaluation of natural experiments of policy interventions.Methods and analysisTwo privacy-protecting population-level cohorts have been created and derived from multisourced demographic and healthcare data. The C20 cohort consists of 3.2 million people in Wales on the 1 January 2020 with follow-up until 31 May 2020. The complete cohort dataset will be updated monthly with some individual datasets available daily. The C16 cohort consists of 3 million people in Wales on the 1 January 2016 with follow-up to 31 December 2019. C16 is designed as a counterfactual cohort to provide contextual comparative population data on disease, health service utilisation and mortality. Study outcomes will: (a) characterise the epidemiology of COVID-19, (b) assess socioeconomic and demographic influences on infection and outcomes, (c) measure the impact of COVID-19 on short -term and longer-term population outcomes and (d) undertake studies on the transmission and spatial spread of infection.Ethics and disseminationThe Secure Anonymised Information Linkage-independent Information Governance Review Panel has approved this study. The study findings will be presented to policy groups, public meetings, national and international conferences, and published in peer-reviewed journals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Kaehne ◽  
Paula Keating

Abstract Background Emergency department (ED) attendances are contributing to rising costs of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Critically assessing the impact of new services to reduce emergency department use can be difficult as new services may create additional access points, unlocking latent demand. The study evaluated an Acute Visiting Scheme (AVS) in a primary care context. We asked if AVS reduces overall ED demand and whether or not it changed utilisation patterns for frequent attenders. Method The study used a pre post single cohort design. The impact of AVS on all-cause ED attendances was hypothesised as a substitution effect, where AVS duty doctor visits would replace emergency department visits. Primary outcome was frequency of ED attendances. End points were reduction of frequency of service use and increase of intervals between attendances by frequent attenders. Results ED attendances for AVS users rose by 47.6%. If AVS use was included, there was a more than fourfold increase of total service utilisation, amounting to 438.3%. It shows that AVS unlocked significant latent demand. However, there was some reduction in the frequency of ED attendances for some patients and an increase in time intervals between ED attendances for others. Conclusion The study demonstrates that careful analysis of patient utilisation can detect a differential impact of AVS on the use of ED. As the new service created additional access points for patients and hence introduces an element of choice, the new service is likely to unlock latent demand. This study illustrates that AVS may be most useful if targeted at specific patient groups who are most likely to benefit from the new service.


2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 309-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Tenan

Few authors have reported nationally representative data on the number of sport and recreation (SR) injuries resulting in emergency department (ED) visitation. The existing studies have only provided 1 or 2 years of data and are not longitudinal in nature.Context: To use a novel algorithmic approach to determine if ED visitation is due to SR, resulting in a substantially larger longitudinal dataset.Objective: Descriptive epidemiology study.Design: Hospital.Setting: The National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, a stratified random-sample survey of US hospital EDs was combined for years 1997–2009. There were 15 699 unweighted patient visits determined to be from SR.Patients or Other Participants: A custom algorithm classified SR visits based on the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification E-code and pattern recognition of narrative text. Sport and recreation visits were assessed by age and categorized according to broad injury classifications. Additional quantification was performed on SR visits for lower extremity and knee-specific injuries. Sample weights were applied to provide national annual estimates.Main Outcome Measure(s): Annually, 4 243 000 ED visits resulted from SR. The largest classification of injury from SR was sprains and strains (896 000/y). Males had substantially more SR-related ED visits than females (2 929 000/y versus 1 314 000/y). For patients 10–49 years old, 1 093 000 lower extremity and 169 000 knee-specific injury visits annually were from SR. For both injury types, males had a higher rate of ED visitation; however, females had 25% and 39% greater odds of visitation for lower extremity and knee-specific injury, respectively.Results: The burden on the health system of ED visits from SR was substantial. Males presented in the ED at a higher rate for SR injury, though females had a higher proportion of lower extremity and knee-specific injury ED visitations from SR. This longitudinal analysis of population-level data provides the information to target research on specific subpopulations to mitigate SR injury.Conclusions:


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lixia Ge ◽  
Chun Wei Yap ◽  
Bee Hoon Heng ◽  
Woan Shin Tan

Abstract Background Frailty is frequently found to be associated with increased healthcare utilisation in western countries, but little is known in Asian population. This study was conducted to investigate the association between frailty and healthcare utilisation in different care settings among community-dwelling older adults in Singapore. Methods Data from a population health survey among community-dwelling adults were linked with an administrative database to retrieve data of healthcare utilisation (including government primary care clinic visits, specialised outpatient clinic visits, emergency department visits, day surgery and hospitalisations) occurred during a six-month look-back period and six-month post-baseline respectively. Baseline frailty status was measured using the five-item FRAIL scale, which was categorised into three groups: robust (0), pre-frail (1–2), and frail (3–5). Negative binomial regression was applied to examine the association between frailty with respective healthcare utilisation (dependent variables), controlling for other confounding variables. Results In our sample of 701 older adults, 64.8% were of robust health, 27.7% were pre-frail, and 7.6% were frail. Compared to the robust group, frail individuals had a higher rate of specialised outpatient clinic visits (incidence rate ratio (IRR): 2.8, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.2–6.5), emergency department visits (IRR: 3.1, 95%CI: 1.1–8.1), day surgery attendances (IRR: 6.4, 95%CI: 1.3–30.9), and hospitalisations (IRR: 6.7, 95%CI: 2.1–21.1) in the six-month period prior to the baseline and in subsequent 6 months (IRR: 3.3, 95%CI: 1.6–7.1; 6.4, 2.4–17.2; 5.8, 1.3–25.8; 13.1, 4.9–35.0; respectively), controlling for covariates. Conclusions Frailty was positively associated with the number of specialised outpatient clinic visits, emergency department visits, day surgeries and hospitalisations occurred during 6 months prior to and after the baseline. As frailty is a potentially reversible health state with early screening and intervention, providing preventive activities that delay the onset or progression of frailty should have potential effect on delaying secondary and tertiary care utilisation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Artem Shmelev ◽  
Laith Batarseh ◽  
Ahmad Ahad

Abstract Aim Analysis of all healthcare encounters (readmissions and emergency department visits, EDV) following both inpatient and outpatient abdominal hernia repairs (AHR), with respect to the timeline of such encounters. Material and Methods Patients undergoing AHR were identified in Maryland State Inpatient and State Ambulatory Surgery and Services Databases, 2016-2017, and all their hospital and ED encounters were assembled into a comprehensive database, covering almost 95% of all AHR performed in Maryland. Results Of the total 26,215 patients who underwent AHR (3,333 inpatient and 22,950 outpatient; 48.7% inguinal and 53.0% ventral/umbilical), 5,802 (22.1%) had at least one postoperative encounter (4,186 EDV, 1,415 readmissions, and 248 encounters for mostly outpatient another AHR). 419 (80.4%) post-operative encounters within the first 48 hours were EDV and 98 (18.8%) were readmissions. Fraction of EDV within later encounters was in 69.6–71.1% range. Most frequent reasons for EDV were urinary complaints (24.1%, 10.6% and 4.0% on POD 0–2, 3–7, and 8–30, respectively), followed by pain control issues (18.1%, 24.9%, 14.4%) and delayed return of bowel function or constipation (10.5%, 9.9%, 3.4%). Readmissions mainly occurred for aforementioned GI complaints (15.3%, 19.9%, 6.9% on POD 0–2, 3–7, and 8–30, respectively), local surgical site infections (5.1%, 15.5%, 26.8%), and respiratory complications (8.2%, 6.6%, 4.1%). Conclusions 2.3% of all patients had at least one readmission while 6.4% patients had at least one EDV within 30 days following herniorrhaphy. Early postoperative EDV were mainly caused by urinary complaints, inadequately controlled pain, or delayed bowel function. Factors associated with these largely preventable complications require dedicated analysis.


2021 ◽  
pp. 070674372110273
Author(s):  
Daniel Myran ◽  
Amy Hsu ◽  
Elizabeth Kunkel ◽  
Emily Rhodes ◽  
Haris Imsirovic ◽  
...  

Objective: While the overall health system burden of alcohol is large and increasing in Canada, little is known about how this burden differs by sociodemographic factors. The objectives of this study were to assess sociodemographic patterns and temporal trends in emergency department (ED) visits due to alcohol to identify emerging and at-risk subgroups. Methods: We conducted a retrospective population-level cohort study of all individuals aged 10 to 105 living in Ontario, Canada. We identified ED visits due to alcohol between 2003 and 2017 using defined International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition, codes from a pre-existing indicator. We calculated annual age- and sex-standardized, and age- and sex-specific rates of ED visits and compared overall patterns and changes over time between urban and rural settings and income quintiles. Results: There were 829,662 ED visits due to alcohol over 15 years. Rates of ED visits due to alcohol were greater for individual living in the lowest- compared to the highest-income quintile neighbourhoods, and disparities (rate ratio lowest to highest quintile) increased with age from 1.22 (95% CI, 1.19 to 1.25) in 15- to 18-year-olds to 4.17 (95% CI, 4.07 to 4.28) in 55- to 59-year-olds. Rates of ED visits due to alcohol were significantly greater in rural settings (56.0 per 10,000 individuals, 95% CI, 55.7 to 56.4) compared to urban settings (44.8 per 10,000 individuals, 95% CI, 44.7 to 44.9), particularly for young adults. Increases in rates of visits between 2003 and 2017 were greater in rural versus urban settings (82 vs. 68% increase in age- and sex-standardized rates) and varied across sociodemographic subgroups with the largest annual increases in rates of visits in young (15 to 29) low-income women (6.9%, 95%CI, 6.7 to 7.3) and the smallest increase in older (45 to 59) high-income men (2.7, 95%CI, 2.4 to 3.0). Conclusion: Alcohol harms display unique patterns with the highest burden in rural and lower-income populations. Rural–urban and income-based disparities differ by age and sex and have increased over time, which offers an imperative and opportunity for further interventions by clinicians and policy makers.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
GE LIXIA ◽  
Chun Wei Yap ◽  
Bee Hoon Heng ◽  
Woan Shin Tan

Abstract Background Frailty is frequently found to be associated with increased healthcare utilisation in western countries, but little is known in Asian population. This study was conducted to investigate the association between frailty and healthcare utilisation in different care settings among community-dwelling older adults in Singapore. Methods Data from a population health survey among community-dwelling adults were linked with an administrative database to retrieve data of healthcare utilisation (including government primary care clinic visits, specialised outpatient clinic visits, emergency department visits, day surgery and hospitalisations) occurred during a six-month look-back period and six-month post-baseline respectively. Baseline frailty status was measured using the five-item FRAIL scale, which was categorised into three groups: robust (0), pre-frail (1–2), and frail (3–5). Negative binomial regression was applied to examine the association between frailty with respective healthcare utilisation (dependent variables), controlling for other confounding variables. Results In our sample of 701 older adults, 64.8% were of robust health, 27.7% were pre-frail, and 7.6% were frail. Compared to the robust group, frail individuals had a higher rate of specialised outpatient clinic visits (incidence rate ratio (IRR): 2.8, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.2-6.5), emergency department visits (IRR: 3.1, 95%CI: 1.1-8.1), day surgery attendances (IRR: 6.4, 95%CI: 1.3-30.9), and hospitalisations (IRR: 6.7, 95%CI: 2.1-21.1) in the six-month period prior to the baseline and in subsequent six months (IRR: 3.3, 95%CI: 1.6-7.1; 6.4, 2.4-17.2; 5.8, 1.3-25.8; 13.1, 4.9-35.0; respectively), controlling for covariates. Conclusions Frailty was positively associated with the number of specialised outpatient clinic visits, emergency department visits, day surgeries and hospitalisations occurred during 6 months prior to and after the baseline. As frailty is a potentially reversible health state with early screening and intervention, providing preventive activities that delay the onset or progression of frailty should have potential effect on delaying secondary and tertiary care utilisation.


BMJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. k4481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Lapointe-Shaw ◽  
Peter C Austin ◽  
Noah M Ivers ◽  
Jin Luo ◽  
Donald A Redelmeier ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective To determine whether patients discharged from hospital during the December holiday period have fewer outpatient follow-ups and higher rates of death or readmission than patients discharged at other times. Design Population based retrospective cohort study. Setting Acute care hospitals in Ontario, Canada, 1 April 2002 to 31 January 2016. Participants 217 305 children and adults discharged home after an urgent admission, during the two week December holiday period, compared with 453 641 children and adults discharged during two control periods in late November and January. Main outcome measures The primary outcome was death or readmission, defined as a visit to an emergency department or urgent rehospitalisation, within 30 days. Secondary outcomes were death or readmission and outpatient follow-up with a physician within seven and 14 days after discharge. Multivariable logistic regression with generalised estimating equations was used to adjust for characteristics of patients, admissions, and hospital. Results 217 305 (32.4%) patients discharged during the holiday period and 453 641 (67.6%) discharged during control periods had similar baseline characteristics and previous healthcare utilisation. Patients who were discharged during the holiday period were less likely to have follow-up with a physician within seven days (36.3% v 47.8%, adjusted odds ratio 0.61, 95% confidence interval 0.60 to 0.62) and 14 days (59.5% v 68.7%, 0.65, 0.64 to 0.66) after discharge. Patients discharged during the holiday period were also at higher risk of 30 day death or readmission (25.9% v 24.7%, 1.09, 1.07 to 1.10). This relative increase was also seen at seven days (13.2% v 11.7%, 1.16, 1.14 to 1.18) and 14 days (18.6% v 17.0%, 1.14, 1.12 to 1.15). Per 100 000 patients, there were 2999 fewer follow-up appointments within 14 days, 26 excess deaths, 188 excess hospital admissions, and 483 excess emergency department visits attributable to hospital discharge during the holiday period. Conclusions Patients discharged from hospital during the December holiday period are less likely to have prompt outpatient follow-up and are at higher risk of death or readmission within 30 days.


CJEM ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (S1) ◽  
pp. S30-S30
Author(s):  
S. Masood ◽  
C.L. Atzema ◽  
P. Austin

Introduction: Patients seen primarily for hypertension are common in the emergency department. The outcomes of these patients have not been described at a population level. In this study we describe the characteristics and outcomes of the patients making these visits, as well as changes over time. Methods: This retrospective cohort study used linked health databases from the province of Ontario, Canada, to assess emergency department visits made between April 1, 2002 and March 31, 2012 with a primary diagnosis of hypertension. We determined the annual number of visits as well as the age and sex standardized rates. We examined visit disposition and assessed mortality outcomes and potential hypertensive complications at 7, 30, 90, 365 days and 2 years subsequent to the ED visit. Results: There were 206,147 qualifying ED visits from 180 sites. Visits increased by 64% between 2002 and 2012, from 15793 to 25950 annual visits, respectively. The age- and sex-standardized rate increased from 170/100,000 persons to 228/100,000 persons over the same time period, a 34% increase. Eight percent of visits ended in hospitalization, but this proportion decreased from 9.9% to 7.1% over the study period. Mortality was very low, at less than 1% within 90 days, 2.5% within 1 year, and 4.1% within 2 years. Among subsequent hospitalizations for potential hypertensive complications, stroke was the most frequent admitting diagnosis, but the frequency was still <1% within 1 year. Together hospitalizations for stroke, heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, atrial fibrillation, renal failure, hypertensive encephalopathy and dissection were <1% at 30 days. Conclusion: The number of visits made primarily for hypertension has increased dramatically over the last decade. While some of the increase is due to aging of the population, other forces are contributing to the increase. Subsequent mortality and complication rates are low and have declined. With current practice patterns, the feared complications of hypertension are extremely infrequent.


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