Abstract
Objective
To assess the number of days that children experienced a health care encounter and
associations between chronic condition types and health care encounters.
Methods
Retrospective analysis of data from 5,082,231 children ages 0 to 18 years enrolled
in Medicaid during 2017 in 12 US states contained in the IBM Watson Marketscan Medicaid
Database. We counted and categorized enrollees’ encounter days, defined as unique
days a child had a health care visit, by type of health service. We used International
Classification of Disease-10 diagnosis code categories from Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality's Chronic Condition Indicator System to identify chronic mental
and physical health conditions.
Results
Median (interquartile range [IQR]) annual encounter days was 6 (2–13). Children in
the 91st to 98th and ≥99th percentiles for encounter days experienced a median of
49 (IQR 38–70) and 229 (IQR 181, 309) days, respectively; these children accounted
for 52.6% of days for the cohort. As encounter days increased from the 25th to >90th
percentile, the percentage of children with co-existing mental and physical health
conditions increased from <0.1% to 47.4% (P < .001). Outpatient visits accounted for a total of 68.3% and 62.2% of days for children
the 91st to 98th and ≥99th percentiles.
Conclusion
Ten percent of children enrolled in Medicaid averaged health care encounters at least
1 day per week; 1% experienced health care encounters on most weekdays. Further investigation
is needed to understand how families perceive frequent health care encounters, including
how to facilitate their children's care in the most feasible way.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 17, 2022
Accepted:
July 7,
2022
Received:
February 28,
2022
Footnotes
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Identification
Copyright
Copyright © 2022 by Academic Pediatric Association
