1. Insurance Status, Comorbidity Diagnosis, and Hepatitis C Diagnosis Among Antibody-Positive Patients: A Retrospective Cohort Study
- Author
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Goodman, Sara H, Zahn, Matthew, Boden-Albala, Bernadette, and Lakon, Cynthia M
- Subjects
Health Services and Systems ,Health Sciences ,Chronic Liver Disease and Cirrhosis ,Infectious Diseases ,Hepatitis ,Hepatitis - C ,Digestive Diseases ,Emerging Infectious Diseases ,Health Services ,HIV/AIDS ,Liver Disease ,Prevention ,Clinical Research ,4.1 Discovery and preclinical testing of markers and technologies ,7.1 Individual care needs ,Management of diseases and conditions ,Detection ,screening and diagnosis ,Infection ,Good Health and Well Being ,hepatitis C ,public health ,public health surveillance ,epidemiology ,health systems research ,electronic medical records - Abstract
BackgroundIn California, laboratories report all hepatitis C (HCV)-positive antibody tests to the state; however, that does not accurately reflect active infection among those patients without a viral load test confirming a patient's HCV diagnosis. These public health surveillance disease incident records do not include patient details such as comorbidities or insurance status found in electronic medical records (EMRs).ObjectiveThis research seeks to understand how insurance type, insurance status, patient comorbidities, and other sociodemographic factors related to HCV diagnosis as defined by a positive viral load test among HCV antibody-positive persons from January 1, 2010 to March 1, 2020.MethodsHCV antibody-positive individuals reported to the California Reportable Disease Information Exchange (CalREDIE), with a medical record number associated with the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, and an unrestricted EMR (n = 521) were extracted using manual chart review.Main outcomes and measuresHCV diagnosis as indicated in a patient's EMR in the problem list or disease registry.ResultsLess than a quarter of patients in this sample were diagnosed as having HCV in their EMR, with 0.4% of those diagnosed (5/116) patients with indicated HCV treatment in the medication field of their charts. After adjusting for multiple comorbidities, a multinomial logistic regression found that the relative risk ratios (RRRs) of HCV diagnosis found that patients with insurance were more likely to be diagnosed compared to those without insurance. When comparing uninsured patients to those with government insurance at the P
- Published
- 2023