Higher Mortality For Patients Without Health Insurance

Statistics from University Buffalo researches found that accident patients with Medicaid had a lower death rate than those who had private insurance. If you are the unfortunate one of an auto accident or gunshot wound without health insurance, you are more likely to die of your injuries than if you have private insurance. Lack of money to hire a nursing assistant or appropriate care is a main cause.

Data from the Institutes of Medicine shows that tens of thousands of people die each year due to lack of insurance. A study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, for example, reported that an uninsured persons chances of dying if hospitalized for a heart attack, stroke, or pneumonia are significantly greater than if he or she had private health insurance and the means to hire a nursing assistant or get the best care. As the country continues to ponder and talk over health insurance costs, coverage, and options, researchers are learning that the cost of not having health insurance can be deadly for many people.

The following study came from 649 facilities and included 150,332 patients who had suffered blunt trauma (mostly motor vehicle accidents, but also falls or assaults) and 41,334 who had penetrating trauma, mostly gunshot wounds but also stabbings. This University Buffalo (UB) study consisted of an evaluation of data from the national Trauma Data Bank for 2001-2005 and included 191,666 patients between the ages of 18 and 30, which eliminated individuals who were more likely to have chronic health conditions.

Dietrich Jehle, MD, UB professor of emergency medicine and the first author on the study, noted that we generally don't know a trauma patients insurance status until after the treatment which makes them think if there are differences in these populations other than the delivery of care. The fact that uninsured patients have a higher mortality rate raises more questions.

Jehle also stated that uninsured adult patients in general have a 25 percent greater mortality rate than insured adults for all medical conditions, and so the studys findings are not as surprising. Lack of health insurance causes people to delay getting treatment, a nursing assistant or other medical options. People without insurance generally are in poorer health, says Jehle, which would reduce their ability to survive trauma.Fact is, in general people without insurance have poorer health which would reduce the ability to survive traumas.

Additional facts that might affect mortality rates include a reluctance to seek medical care or nursing assistance by certain ethnic groups because of language barriers, or that the uninsured are more likely to drive older, less safe vehicles.

This data also found, however, that patients on Medicaid who suffered injury in a motor vehicle accident had a lesser death rate than people who had private insurance, which suggests that factors other than the amount of payment for medical services and nursing assistants influences the outcome of trauma care.

Jehle suggests that having universal health coverage can have a good impact on the population that they researched. For instance, he noted, there would be no need for patients to delay treatment or nursing assistants with universal health coverage, and such nursing assistants and health coverage could improve the overall health status of injury victims and improve their survival rates. Time will tell on how the new health insurance and health reform laws will impact mortality among accident patients and other health care consumers.