Utilization of health resources in South Asian, Chinese and white patients with diabetes mellitus.

Abstract

AIMS: We sought to determine whether there are differences in health resource utilization among South Asian (SA), Chinese and White patients with newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus. METHODS: We used province-wide administrative data from British Columbia, Canada (1997-2006) to determine proportion of patients with ≥2 visits/year for all outpatient and family physician (FP) visits, proportion of patients with at least one annual visit to specialists, ophthalmology/optometry and hospital admissions by ethnic group. RESULTS: There were 9529 South Asian, 14,084 Chinese and 143,630 White patients with newly diagnosed diabetes in the study. Over 90% of each of the ethnic groups visited their FP ≥2 visits/year. Chinese patients were less likely to visit FP, ophthalmology/optometrists and specialists compared to White patients. SA patients had fewer ophthalmology/optometry visits compared to White populations. White patients had higher rates of hospitalization. CONCLUSION: Although all groups had high proportion of patients with appropriate frequency of FP visits, other aspects of health care utilization varied significantly by ethnicity.