Associations between physical and mental health and the utilization of ambulatory and emergency healthcare among asylum-seekers: results from a cross-sectional survey in Berlin, Germany

BACKGROUND: Despite a high burden of chronic and mental illness, asylum-seekers show low utilization of ambulatory specialist healthcare. Forgoing timely healthcare when facing access barriers may direct them toward emergency care. This paper examines interrelations of physical and mental health and utilization of ambulatory and emergency care, and explicitly addresses associations between the different types of care. METHODS: A structural equation model was applied to a sample of n = 136 asylum-seekers living in accommodation centers in Berlin, Germany. Utilization patterns of emergency care (outcome) and physical and mental ambulatory care (endogenous predictors) were estimated, while controlling for age, gender, chronic conditions, bodily pain, depression, anxiety, length of stay in Germany (exogenous predictors) and self-rated health (endogenous predictor). RESULTS: Associations were observed between ambulatory care utilization and poor self-rated health (0.207, CI: 0.05; 0.364), chronic illness (0.096, CI: 0.017; 0.175) and bodily pain (0.019, CI: 0.002; 0.036); between mental healthcare utilization and anxiety (0.202, CI: 0.051; 0.352); and between emergency care utilization and poor self-rated health (0.621, CI: 0.059; 1.183), chronic illness (0.287, CI: 0.012; 0.563), mental healthcare utilization (0.842, CI: 0.148; 1.535) and anxiety (0.790, CI: 0.141; 1.438) (values in parentheses show estimated regression coefficients and 95% confidence intervals). We found no associations between the utilization of ambulatory and emergency care. CONCLUSIONS: Our study generates mixed results concerning associations between healthcare needs and ambulatory and emergency care utilization among asylum-seekers. We found no evidence that low utilization of ambulatory care contributes to emergency care utilization; neither did we find evidence that ambulatory treatment obviates the need to seek emergency care. Our results indicate that higher physical healthcare needs and anxiety are associated with more utilization of both ambulatory and emergency care; whereas healthcare needs related to depression tend to remain unmet. Both the undirected and under-utilization of health services may reflect navigation and accessibility issues. To facilitate more needs-based and effective healthcare utilization and thus contribute to health equity, support services such as interpretation and care navigation as well as outreach are warranted.