New Medicare and Medicaid Study Findings Have Been Reported by Investigators at University of Maryland (Impact of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid…

Managed Care Weekly Digest

New Medicare and Medicaid Study Findings Have Been Reported by Investigators at University of Maryland (Impact of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion on emergency department high utilizers with ambulatory care sensitive conditions: A ...)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Managed Care Weekly Digest -- Investigators publish new report on Medicare and Medicaid. According to news reporting from Baltimore, Maryland, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, "The effect of the Affordable Care Act on emergency department (ED) high utilizers has not yet been thoroughly studied. We sought to determine the impact of changes in insurance eligibility following the 2014 Medicaid expansion on ED utilization for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC) by high ED utilizers in an urban safety net hospital."

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from the University of Maryland, "High utilizers were defined as patients with >= 4 visits in the 6 months before their most recent visit in the study period (July-December before and after Maryland's Medicaid expansion in January 2014). A differences-in-differences approach using logistic regression was used to investigate if differences between high and low utilizer cohorts changed from before and after the expansion. During the study period, 726 (4.1%) out of 17,795 unique patients in 2013 and 380 (2.4%) of 16,458 during the same period in 2014 were high utilizers (p-value < 0.001). ACSC-associated visit predicted being a high utilizer in 2013 (OR 1.66 (95% CI [1.37, 2.01])) and 2014 (OR 1.65 (95% CI [1.27, 2.15])) but this was not different between years (OR ratio 0.99, 95% CI [0.72, 1.38], p-value 0.97)."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "Although the proportion of high utilizers decreased significantly after Maryland's Medicaid expansion, ACSC-associated ED visits by high ED utilizers were unaffected."

For more information on this research see: Impact of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion on emergency department high utilizers with ambulatory care sensitive conditions: A cross-sectional study. American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 2017;35(5):737-742. American Journal of Emergency Medicine can be contacted at: W B Saunders Co-Elsevier Inc, 1600 John F Kennedy Boulevard, Ste 1800, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2899, USA. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; American Journal of Emergency Medicine - www.journals.elsevier.com/american-journal-of-emergency-medicine/)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting D.B. Gingold, University of Maryland, Dept. of Emergency Med, Baltimore, MD 21201, United States. Additional authors for this research include R. Pierre-Mathieu, B. Cole, A.C. Miller and J.S. Khaldun (see also Medicare and Medicaid).

Keywords for this news article include: Baltimore, Maryland, United States, North and Central America, Medicare and Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, Health Policy, Medicaid, University of Maryland.