Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Doctor of Healthcare Administration (D.H.A.)

School

Health Services

Advisor

Brittany Smalls

Abstract

Health care costs are most commonly concentrated among small groups of high-cost patients, or high utilizers. Many of these patients receive unnecessary and ineffective care and often critical health care needs can go unmet, even when substantial care from multiple sources is received. Thus, there is a need to look into high utilizing patients for not only quality improvement but also effective resource allocation. The operational problem for health care administrators is managing resources and improving quality of care by targeting specific medical conditions that may be high utilizers of medical resources. The purpose of this study was to identify a relationship, if any, of a disproportionate amount of health care resource utilization by patients with heart disease who have depressive symptoms using MEPS data from 2018. This correlational quantitative study was guided by the Andersen-Newman Behavioral Model for health service utilization to provide a framework for the study. A Spearman’s rank-order correlation analysis and one-way multivariate analysis of variance (one-way MANOVA) was used for the analysis of the data. The results indicated that there was a significant relationship between health care utilization and heart disease patients with depressive symptoms. There was also a significant difference in the amount of health care utilization when comparing those diagnosed with heart disease and having reported depressive symptoms and those diagnosed with heart disease and having reported no depressive symptoms. The findings from this study may be used for positive social change through future research design and policy design.

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