Cargando…

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: Evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data()

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced federal, state, and local policymakers to respond by legislating, enacting, and enforcing social distancing policies. However, the impact of these policies on healthcare utilization in the United States has been largely unexplored. We examine the impact of county-lev...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cantor, Jonathan, Sood, Neeraj, Bravata, Dena M., Pera, Megan, Whaley, Christopher
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8755425/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35067386
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2022.102581
_version_ 1784632378613825536
author Cantor, Jonathan
Sood, Neeraj
Bravata, Dena M.
Pera, Megan
Whaley, Christopher
author_facet Cantor, Jonathan
Sood, Neeraj
Bravata, Dena M.
Pera, Megan
Whaley, Christopher
author_sort Cantor, Jonathan
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic has forced federal, state, and local policymakers to respond by legislating, enacting, and enforcing social distancing policies. However, the impact of these policies on healthcare utilization in the United States has been largely unexplored. We examine the impact of county-level shelter in place ordinances on healthcare utilization using two unique datasets—employer-sponsored insurance for over 6 million people in the US and cell phone location data. We find that introduction of these policies was associated with reductions in the use of preventive care, elective care, and the number of weekly visits to physician offices, hospitals and other health care-related industries. However, controlling for county-level exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to account for the endogenous nature of policy implementation reduces the impact of these policies. Our results imply that while social distancing policies do lead to reductions in healthcare utilization, much of these reductions would have occurred even in the absence of these policies.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8755425
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher Elsevier B.V.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-87554252022-01-13 The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: Evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data() Cantor, Jonathan Sood, Neeraj Bravata, Dena M. Pera, Megan Whaley, Christopher J Health Econ Article The COVID-19 pandemic has forced federal, state, and local policymakers to respond by legislating, enacting, and enforcing social distancing policies. However, the impact of these policies on healthcare utilization in the United States has been largely unexplored. We examine the impact of county-level shelter in place ordinances on healthcare utilization using two unique datasets—employer-sponsored insurance for over 6 million people in the US and cell phone location data. We find that introduction of these policies was associated with reductions in the use of preventive care, elective care, and the number of weekly visits to physician offices, hospitals and other health care-related industries. However, controlling for county-level exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to account for the endogenous nature of policy implementation reduces the impact of these policies. Our results imply that while social distancing policies do lead to reductions in healthcare utilization, much of these reductions would have occurred even in the absence of these policies. Elsevier B.V. 2022-03 2022-01-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8755425/ /pubmed/35067386 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2022.102581 Text en © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Cantor, Jonathan
Sood, Neeraj
Bravata, Dena M.
Pera, Megan
Whaley, Christopher
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: Evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data()
title The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: Evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data()
title_full The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: Evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data()
title_fullStr The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: Evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data()
title_full_unstemmed The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: Evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data()
title_short The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: Evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data()
title_sort impact of the covid-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data()
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8755425/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35067386
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2022.102581
work_keys_str_mv AT cantorjonathan theimpactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata
AT soodneeraj theimpactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata
AT bravatadenam theimpactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata
AT peramegan theimpactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata
AT whaleychristopher theimpactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata
AT cantorjonathan impactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata
AT soodneeraj impactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata
AT bravatadenam impactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata
AT peramegan impactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata
AT whaleychristopher impactofthecovid19pandemicandpolicyresponseonhealthcareutilizationevidencefromcountylevelmedicalclaimsandcellphonedata