Analysis suggests access to primary care could play an important role in reducing hospitalizations

Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M23-0876  

URL goes live when the embargo lifts 

A secondary analysis of a randomized encouragement study found that Medicare patients who received social needs case management had a 3% increase in primary care visits and an 11% reduction in inpatient hospitalizations. These findings suggest that increased access to primary care could play an important role in reducing acute care use. A brief research report is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health conducted a secondary analysis of a study that assigned Medicaid beneficiaries with a high risk for acute care to use social needs case management or to be observed in the control group. The goal was to evaluate the impacts of social needs case management intervention on use of outpatient health care, behavioral health services, and jail intakes. The researchers found that the intervention group had significantly higher rates of primary care visits compared with the control group. No differences were found between the treatment groups for specialty care visits, behavioral health visits, psychiatric emergency visits, or jail intakes. The authors say that case management could increase primary care use by flexibly helping patients overcome social barriers to care. They cite the example of case managers helping patients find transportation, navigate the health care system, and facilitate insurance coverage.

 

Media contacts: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Angela Collom at [email protected]. To speak with the corresponding author Mark D. Fleming, PhD, please contact [email protected].