Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 25, 2025
Handwriting Analysis Indicates Spontaneous Dyskinesias in Neuroleptic Naïve Adolescents at High Risk for Psychosis
Published on: November 21, 2013
Comparing Healthcare Utilization and Diagnoses in Immigrant Versus Nonimmigrant Youth
Sarah Polk1, Kathryn M Leifheit1,2, Amelia J Brandt1
1Department of Pediatrics, 1500Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Insights
The Access Partnership (TAP) program provided immigrant youth with charity care similar to Medicaid patients. Extending public health insurance to all children could benefit immigrant children without increasing costs for low-income U.S. citizens.
Area of Science:
- Health Services Research
- Public Health Policy
- Pediatric Healthcare
Background:
- Uninsured immigrant youth face significant healthcare access barriers.
- The Access Partnership (TAP) offers a hospital-based charity care program for uninsurable immigrant youth.
- Understanding healthcare utilization and diagnoses in this population is crucial for policy development.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe the TAP charity care program.
- To compare healthcare utilization and diagnoses between TAP patients and Medicaid patients.
- To inform policy regarding healthcare access for immigrant children.
Main Methods:
- Propensity score matching was used to create comparable groups of TAP and Medicaid patients.
- Demographic characteristics were used for matching.
- Descriptive statistics were employed to analyze healthcare visits and diagnoses.
Main Results:
- TAP and Medicaid patients exhibited similar overall healthcare utilization.
- Medicaid patients had more outpatient visits (10.8 vs. 7.7), while TAP patients were more likely to receive subspecialty care (38.5% vs. 22.2%).
- Key diagnostic differences included higher rates of genital/reproductive disease in TAP patients and endocrine/metabolic/nutritional and psychiatric/behavioral diseases in Medicaid patients.
Conclusions:
- The Access Partnership program demonstrates comparable healthcare utilization and diagnostic profiles to Medicaid.
- Findings support extending public health insurance to all children, including immigrant youth.
- Such policies are likely to benefit immigrant children and incur costs similar to those for low-income U.S. citizen children.
Introduction:
To inform efforts to provide healthcare to uninsurable, immigrant youth, we describe The Access Partnership (TAP) hospital-based charity care program and compare healthcare utilization and diagnoses among TAP and Medicaid patients.
Methods:
We use propensity scores to match each TAP patient to three Medicaid patients receiving care at a pediatric clinic from October 2010 to June 2015 on demographic characteristics. We use descriptive statistics to compare healthcare visits and diagnoses.
Results:
TAP (n = 78) and Medicaid patients (n = 234) had similar healthcare utilization, though Medicaid patients had more outpatient visits (10.8 vs. 7.7, p = .002), and TAP patients were more likely to have ever received subspecialty care (38.5% vs. 22.2%, p = .005). Diagnoses were similar between groups, with some exceptions: TAP patients more likely to present with genital and reproductive disease (33.3% vs. 19.7%, p = .013); Medicaid patients more likely to present with endocrine, metabolic, and nutritional disease (52.1% vs. 28.2%, p < .001), psychiatric, behavioral disease, and substance abuse (41.0, 26.9%, p = .026).
Conclusions:
TAP patients had similar healthcare utilization and diagnoses to matched sample of Medicaid patients. Findings indicate policy proposals that extend public health insurance to all children would likely benefit immigrant children and not incur higher costs than those of low-income U.S. citizen children.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
01:27Ethnic Identity within a Larger Culture
01:29Bias in Epidemiological Studies
01:11Secondary Healthcare System
01:08Prevalence and Incidence
Prevalence indicates the proportion of individuals in a population who have a specific disease or health...
01:30Preventive Healthcare Services
01:26Methods Of Healthcare Delivery System
Managed Care System:
The managed care system is designed to control the cost while maintaining the quality of care. The patient's care from admission to discharge is planned by the primary care provider or the case manager, also known as the gatekeeper. In a managed care system, the number of care providers is...