Delayed medical care and underlying health in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study

Autumn H Gertz; Catherine C Pollack; Marinanicole D Schultheiss; John S Brownstein

doi:10.1016/j.pmedr.2022.101882

Delayed medical care and underlying health in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study

Prev Med Rep. 2022 Aug:28:101882. doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2022.101882. Epub 2022 Jul 5.

Authors

Autumn H Gertz¹, Catherine C Pollack^{1

2

3}, Marinanicole D Schultheiss¹, John S Brownstein^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Computational Epidemiology Lab, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
² Department of Biomedical Data Science, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH, USA.
³ Department of Epidemiology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH, USA.
⁴ Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.

Abstract

This study assesses the association between underlying health conditions and delaying medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online cross-sectional survey administered by OutbreaksNearMe.org on Momentive.ai collected self-reported data from April 27 to June 2, 2020 and May 10 to June 13, 2021. We used weighted multivariable logistic regressions to assess the association between delaying care and self-reported health status, adjusting for demographics. Of 312,661 total responses (99.6% completion rate), 17.1% reported delayed medical care. Compared to good health, those with poor health were more likely to delay care (AOR = 2.62, 95% CI [2.47, 2.78]). Individuals with any underlying condition (AOR = 1.62, 95% CI [1.58, 1.65]) and each of the conditions were more likely to delay care. Differences in delaying care were observed across region, year, and demographics. Our finding is that those at higher risk of severe COVID-19 were more likely to delay medical care in 2020 and 2021, which could exacerbate existing health conditions and existing disparities.

Keywords: COVID-19; Delayed medical care; Health outcomes; Underlying health conditions.