Abstract
Purpose :
Individuals aged 65 or older have a high burden of ocular diseases. There is lack of national data regarding utilization for inflammatory and infectious eye diseases for this age group. The primary aim of our study is to determine the overall utilization and utilization stratified by sex, race, state, for treated infectious and inflammatory eye diseases affecting individuals 65 years or older. We have performed a retrospective, observational study based on the Medicare database for the year 2015. Medicare covers eye services for nearly the entire US population aged 65 years or older. Hence, those enrolled are highly representative of the overall population aged 65 and older.
Methods :
We have used Medicare data available through Vision and Eye Health Surveillance System (VEHSS). The VEHSS uses ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes to identify eye disorders. Each codes is in one subgroup and multiple subgroups are combined to form a category. Infectious and inflammatory eye disease category: includes subgroups of infectious diseases, keratitis, conjunctivitis, eyelid infection and inflammation, other ocular inflammatory conditions, lacrimal system and orbital inflammation and endophthalmitis. We have included beneficiaries who were fully enrolled in Medicare part B fee for service in 2015. Data are available through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS) Virtual Data Research Center (VRDC). Utilization rate is calculated as prevalence rate per 100 persons. Denominator is the total number of Medicare beneficiaries for the year 2015. Clopper-Pearson method based on binomial distribution is used for calculating confidence intervals.
Results :
There were 30,027,208 million Medicare beneficiaries in 2015. Of the total Medicare beneficiaries, 8.46 % ( 95% CI: 8.45-8.47) were treated for infectious and inflammatory eye diseases in 2015. Table 1 shows medicare utilization for treated inflammatory and infectious eye diseases stratified by sex, race. Table 2 shows, four states with highest and lowest medicare utilization for treated inflammatory and infectious eye diseases.
Conclusions :
Our study on Medicare utilization for infectious and inflammatory eye diseases reveals variability in utilization based on race, sex and state. Males, blacks, native Americans, patients living in Alaska and Wisconsin have lower utilization.
This abstract was presented at the 2019 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, April 28 - May 2, 2019.