Fewer cardiac arrests after Affordable Care Act expanded coverage28th June 2017 by Katherine Lindemann
Incidence of cardiac arrest dropped by 17 percent among middle-aged adults after the ACA went into effect.The United States has 350,000 cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year, a vast majority of them fatal. To determine how Oregon’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare,” impacted these devastating events, researchers crunched the numbers. A recent study in the
Journal of the American Heart Association compared emergency medical care statistics for an urban county before and after the law went into effect. After the Affordable Care Act was implemented, incidence of cardiac arrest was 17 percent lower. We spoke with senior author
Sumeet Chugh to learn more.
ResearchGate: What motivated this study?Sumeet Chugh: Health insurance has an overall health benefit, but there is little information on major adverse events, such as sudden cardiac arrest. Lethal in nine out of ten patients who experience this condition, cardiac arrest is a human catastrophe that affects a 1,000 Americans a day.
RG: What did you find? Chugh: Expansion of health care insurance as a result of implementing the Affordable Care Act in Oregon significantly reduced the burden of sudden cardiac arrest (by 17 percent) among 45- to 64-year-old residents of Multnomah County. Such an effect was not observed in the over 65 age group, for whom coverage did not change.
RG: What do you think led to this decrease in incidents of cardiac arrest?Chugh: It’s likely multifactorial, possibly with a significant contribution from access to preventive health care enabled by the insurance expansion. At least 50 percent of this age group—both men and women—experience warning signs in the weeks that precede the sudden cardiac arrest event. While this would need to be specifically evaluated, it is possible that new access to health care encouraged some of these patients to see providers and receive treatments that prevented sudden cardiac arrest.
By the time sudden cardiac arrest happens, it is lethal for the vast majority of patients. Therefore, only prevention will make a real impact. Our findings underline the important role of prevention in this regard, and more work is needed to tease out and focus on specific aspects that help the most.
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Excerpt. Read more at
https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/fewer-cardiac-arrests-after-affordable-care-act-expanded-coverageThe paper may be downloaded for free from
http://jaha.ahajournals.org/content/6/7/e005667Figures and data here:
http://jaha.ahajournals.org/content/6/7/e005667/tab-figures-data