The Association Between Continuity of Care and the Overuse of Medical Procedures.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Both the overuse of unnecessary medical procedures and poor continuity of care are thought to contribute to high health care spending and poor patient outcomes.

Objective

To investigate the association between care continuity and use of potentially unnecessary procedures.

Design, setting, and participants

Observational retrospective cohort (n = 1,208,250 patients > 65 years) using 5% Medicare fee-for-service claims from 2008.

Main outcomes and measures

We evaluated continuity using the Bice-Boxerman continuity of care index. We measured overuse using a previously validated set of 19 potentially overused procedures.

Results

Altogether, 14.7% of patients received at least 1 potentially overused procedure during the calendar year. For each 0.1 in

SUBMITTER: Romano MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5577558 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature