Healthcare Fragmentation and Incident Acute Coronary Heart Disease Events: a Cohort Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Highly fragmented ambulatory care (i.e., care spread across many providers without a dominant provider) has been associated with excess tests, procedures, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations. Whether fragmented care is associated with worse health outcomes, or whether any association varies with health status, is unclear.

Objective

To determine whether fragmented care is associated with the risk of incident coronary heart disease (CHD) events, overall and stratified by self-rated general health.

Design and participants

We conducted a secondary analysis of the nationwide prospective Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) cohort study (2003-2016). We included participants who were ≥ 65 years old, had linked Medicare fe

SUBMITTER: Kern LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7878592 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature