posted 01/20/03
TORONTO -- Canadian researchers have found a strong link between income levels and potentially avoidable hospitalizations among people with diabetes.
The association is important because it shows even universal health insurance, which is standard in Canada, can't completely erase the differences in health outcomes for different socioeconomic groups.
Researchers looked at more than 600,000 patients with diabetes living in urban and rural areas in Canada between 1992 and 1999. All were assessed for socioeconomic status using information from the Canadian census.
Results show people in the lowest income group were 44 percent more likely than those in the highest group to go to the emergency room or be hospitalized for diabetic complications such as hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) or hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) which could easily have been prevented by good outpatient care. The finding held true even after researchers adjusted the results to account for age, sex, urban vs. rural residence, other diseases, frequency of physician visits, and other factors.
Researchers believe more study is needed to determine why people from lower socioeconomic groups are less likely to have good diabetes control, even when they have similar access to care as those in higher income groups. If levels of care had been the same in their study, they report 40,000 hospitalizations/ER visits could have been avoided over the seven-year period.
Authors write, "Strategies to prevent acute complications may not only reduce the burden of illness among vulnerable groups but may lead to an appreciable cost savings to the health care system."
Source: Ivanhoe Newswire: Archives of Internal Medicine, 2003;163:101-106.
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