• J Am Board Fam Med · Oct 2024

    Impact of COVID-19 on Chronic Ambulatory-Care-Sensitive Condition Emergency Department Use Among Older Adults.

    • Arch G Mainous, Lu Yin, James F Medley, Aaron A Saguil, and Frank A Orlando.
    • From the Department of Community Health and Family Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL (AGM, LY, JFM, AAS, FAO), Department of Health Services Research Management, and Policy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL (AGM). arch.mainous@ufl.edu).
    • J Am Board Fam Med. 2024 Oct 25; 37 (4): 792795792-795.

    BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic social distancing requirements encouraged patients to avoid public spaces including in-office health care visits. Ambulatory-care-sensitive conditions (ACSCs) represent conditions that can be managed with quality primary care and when access is limited, these conditions can lead to avoidable emergency department (ED) visits.MethodsUsing national data on ED visits from 2019 to 2021 in the National Hospital Ambulatory Care Survey, we examined the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on ACSC ED visits among older adults (aged ≥65).ResultsThe proportion of ED visits among older adults that were for ACSCs increased between 2019 (17.4%) and 2021 (18.5%). The trend in both rural (26.4%-28.6%) and urban areas (15.4%-16.8%) shows a significant jump from 2019 to 2021 (P < .001).ConclusionsThis rise in ACSC ED use is consistent with a delay in normal primary care during the pandemic.© Copyright by the American Board of Family Medicine.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…