The Effects of Out-of-Pocket Payments on Emergency and Trauma Surgery Patients’ Livelihoods – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

The Effects of Out-of-Pocket Payments on Emergency and Trauma Surgery Patients’ Livelihoods

Nirali Patel

Nirali Patel

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Research Mentor(s): Pooja Neiman, Research Fellow
Research Mentor School/College/Department: National Clinical Scholar Program,
Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Session: Session 2 (11am – 11:50am)
Breakout Room: Room 19
Presenter: 5

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Abstract

Every year, 3 million US residents suffer from injuries leading to needing medical care. The trauma care system has greatly improved saving lives from the time of injury, but many patients are left with out-of-pocket (OOP) payments whether or not they had insurance coverage. We do not know what the burden of these OOP payments are, including the long term financial, mental, and physical impact. The specific aims of this study are to 1) measure the OOP payments for patients who had an emergency surgical procedure, 2) quantify whether these OOP payments change on average by the type of insurance a patient has (private, Medicaid, Medicare, uninsured), and 3) understand the hardship caused by OOP payments for these emergency surgical procedures on the patient and their family. This study reports the findings from in-depth qualitative interviews of 30 patients =18 years of age sustaining a traumatic injury requiring treatment at the University of Michigan Hospital trauma center. We expect our mixed-methods analysis to elucidate the downstream effects of large OOP payments not otherwise able to be captured in available databases. Our findings will be one of the first to describe the long-term burden of trauma care and estimate the out-of-pocket payments trauma patients face from patient-level data.

Authors: Ahmad Chammout
Research Method: Clinical Research

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