MM Curator summary
[MM Curator Summary]: Even after accounting for all other person-level variables, Medicaid members still don’t complete ordered imaging followups.
The article below has been highlighted and summarized by our research team. It is provided here for member convenience as part of our Curator service.
Purpose
To determine which, if any, patient-level factors were associated with differences in completion of follow-up imaging recommendations at a tertiary academic medical center.
Methods
In this IRB-approved, retrospective cohort study, approximately one month of imaging recommendations were reviewed from 2017 at a single academic institution that contained key words recommending follow-up imaging. Age, gender, race/ethnicity, insurance, smoking history, primary language, BMI, and home address were recorded via chart extraction. Home addresses were geocoded to Census Block Groups and assigned to a quintile of neighborhood socioeconomic status. A multivariate logistic regression model was used to evaluate each predictor variable with significance set to p = 0.05.
Results
A total of 13,421 imaging reports that included additional follow-up recommendations were identified. Of the 1013 included reports that recommended follow-up, 350 recommended additional imaging and were analyzed. Three hundred eight (88.00%) had corresponding follow-up imaging present and the insurance payor was known for 266 (86.36%) patients: 146 (47.40%) had commercial insurance, 35 (11.36%) had Medicaid, and 85 (27.60%) had Medicare. Patients with Medicaid had over four times lower odds of completing follow-up imaging compared to patients with commercial insurance (OR 0.24, 95% CI 0.06–0.88, p = 0.032). Age, gender, race/ethnicity, smoking history, primary language, BMI, and neighborhood socioeconomic status were not independently associated with differences in follow-up imaging completion.
Conclusion
Patients with Medicaid had decreased odds of completing follow-up imaging recommendations compared to patients with commercial insurance.
Clipped from: https://www.clinicalimaging.org/article/S0899-7071(22)00184-X/fulltext