A six-year descriptive analysis of hospitalisations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions among people born in refuge
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BioMed Central
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A six-year descriptive analysis of hospitalisations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions among people born in refugee-source countries Ignacio Correa-Velez*1, Zahid Ansari2, Vijaya Sundararajan3, Kaye Brown4 and Sandra M Gifford1 Address: 1Refugee Health Research Centre, La Trobe University, Victoria 3086, Australia, 2Chronic Disease Surveillance and Epidemiology Section, Public Health Branch, Department of Human Services, 15/50 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia, 3Programs Branch, Health Surveillance and Evaluation Section, Department of Human Services, 19/50 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia and 4Statewide Elective Surgery Program, Access and Metropolitan Performance Branch, Department of Human Services, 18/50 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia Email: Ignacio Correa-Velez* - [email protected]; Zahid Ansari - [email protected]; Vijaya Sundararajan - [email protected]; Kaye Brown - [email protected]; Sandra M Gifford - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 3 October 2007 Population Health Metrics 2007, 5:9
doi:10.1186/1478-7954-5-9
Received: 12 March 2007 Accepted: 3 October 2007
This article is available from: http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/5/1/9 © 2007 Correa-Velez et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Hospitalisation for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSHs) has become a recognised tool to measure access to primary care. Timely and effective outpatient care is highly relevant to refugee populations given the past exposure to torture and trauma, and poor access to adequate health care in their countries of origin and during flight. Little is known about ACSHs among resettled refugee populations. With the aim of examining the hypothesis that people from refugee backgrounds have higher ACSHs than people born in the country of hospitalisation, this study analysed a six-year state-wide hospital discharge dataset to estimate ACSH rates for residents born in refugee-source countries and compared them with the Australia-born population. Methods: Hospital discharge data between 1 July 1998 and 30 June 2004 from the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset were used to assess ACSH rates among residents born in eight refugee-source countries, and compare them with the Australia-born average. Rate ratios and 95% confidence levels were used to illustrate these comparisons. Four categories of ambulatory care sensitive conditions were measured: total, acute, chronic and vaccine-preventable. Country of birth was used as a proxy indicator of refugee status. Results: When compared with the Australia-born population, hospitalisations for total and acute ambulatory c
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