Arbeitspapier

Office Visits Preventing Emergency Room Visits: Evidence from the Flint Water Switch

Emergency department visits are costly to providers and to patients. We use the Flint water crisis to test if an increase in office visits reduced avoidable emergency room visits. In September 2015, the city of Flint issued a lead advisory to its residents, alerting them of increased lead levels in their drinking water, resulting from the switch in water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Using Medicaid claims for 2013-2016, we find that this information shock increased the share of enrollees who had lead tests performed by 1.7 percentage points. Additionally, it increased office visits immediately following the information shock and led to a reduction of 4.9 preventable, non-emergent, and primary-care-treatable emergency room visits per 1000 eligible children (8.2%). This decrease is present in shifts from emergency room visits to office visits across several common conditions. Our analysis suggest that children were more likely to receive care from the same clinic following lead tests and that establishing care reduced the likelihood parents would take their children to emergency rooms for conditions treatable in an office setting. Our results are potentially applicable to any situation in which individuals are induced to seek more care in an office visit setting.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 13098

Classification
Wirtschaft
State and Local Government: Health; Education; Welfare; Public Pensions
Health Behavior
Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
Environmental Economics: Government Policy
Subject
environmental regulation
lead
medicaid
emergency care

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Danagoulian, Shooshan
Grossman, Daniel
Slusky, David
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
(where)
Bonn
(when)
2020

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Danagoulian, Shooshan
  • Grossman, Daniel
  • Slusky, David
  • Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Time of origin

  • 2020

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