Medicaid insured persons with diabetes have increased proportion of missed appointments and high HbA1c

Objective

This study was conducted to evaluate whether the type of insurance coverage is associated with missed appointments and to evaluate the effect of missed appointments on diabetes control.

Methods

All patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) managed at a major academic medical center between Jan 2015 and Dec 2020 were included in analysis. Association between insurance coverage and the proportion of missed appointments was evaluated with adjustments for demographic variables and social determinants of health. The relationship between proportion of missed appointments and glycemic control was also evaluated.

Results

The dataset included 30,633 patients, out of which 14,064 (46%) reported commercial insurance, 13,376 (44%) reported Medicare and 3,193 (10%) reported Medicaid coverage. Proportion of missed appointments was 18.1 ± 18.1% among Medicaid covered patients,12.1 ± 15.3% among commercially insured and 10.2 ± 14.1% among Medicare covered patients (p < 0.001). Type of insurance was found to be a significant predictor of proportion of missed appointments after adjusting for age, race, language, marital status, smoking, BMI, HbA1c and type of diabetes (p < 0.001) in series regression analysis. Proportion of missed appointments was associated with HbA1c with partial correlation coefficient +0.104 (p < 0.005) after adjusting for age, race, gender, type of insurance coverage, BMI and type of diabetes.

Conclusions

Medicaid covered patients with diabetes have higher proportion of missed clinic appointments and higher HbA1c. More research is needed to evaluate the root causes of inability to keep appointments in this population so that strategies for improved healthcare delivery can be designed.