Low-income patients with diabetes are being diagnosed and treated earlier in states that have expanded Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, suggests a new study conducted by Quest Diagnostics and published in Diabetes Care, the journal of the American Diabetes Association.
When the analysis was conducted, 26 states plus Washington, D.C. had expanded Medicaid. That created an opportunity to look at the impact of Medicaid expansion on the number of Medicaid patients with newly identified diabetes among enrollees (age 19–64) who had laboratory testing through Quest Diagnostics.
Researchers, which compared the number of newly identified diabetics in 2014 to the number of newly identified diabetics in 2013, found that the number of Medicaid patients with newly identified diabetes surged 23 percent in states that expanded Medicaid, but increased by only 0.4 percent in states that did not.
Researchers also found that Medicaid patients in the expansion states had lower mean hemoglobin A1c levels than Medicaid patients in nonexpansion states. Researchers said this supports their observation that the newly identified patients with diabetes in the expansion states are more likely at an earlier state of their disease than within the nonexpansion states.
"We postulate that these Medicaid patients with newly identified diabetes will experience better management of their disease than if diagnoses had been made later," the researchers wrote. "This could be anticipated to lead to fewer long-term complications."
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