County-Level Socioeconomic Disparities in Use of Medical Services for Management of Infections by Medicare Beneficiaries With Diabetes—United States, 2012
Objective:
To assess county-level socioeconomic disparities in medical service usage for infections among Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes (MBWDs) who had fee-for-service health insurance claims during 2012.
Design:
We used Medicare claims data to calculate percentage of MBWDs with infections.
Setting:
Medicare beneficiaries.
Participants:
We estimated the percentage of MBWDs who used medical services for each of 3 groups of infections by sex and quintiles of the prevalence of social factors in the person's county of residence: anatomic site-specific infections; pathogen-specific infections; and HHST infections (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases, and tuberculosis).
Main Outcome Measures:
Using quintiles of county-specific socioeconomic determinants, we calculated absolute and relative disparities in each group of infections for male and female MBWDs. We also used regression-based summary measures to estimate the overall average absolute and relative disparities for each infection group.
Results:
Of the 4.5 million male MBWDs, 15.8%, 25.3%, and 2.7% had 1 or more site-specific, pathogen-specific, and HHST infections, respectively. Results were similar for females (n = 5.2 million). The percentage of MBWDs with 1 or more infections in each group increased as social disadvantage in the MBWDs' county of residence increased. Absolute and relative county-level socioeconomic disparitie...
Source: Journal of Public Health Management and Practice - Category: Health Management Tags: Research Reports: Research Full Report Source Type: research
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