This project investigates unmet healthcare needs in individuals diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), a chronic inflammatory disease primarily affecting the gastrointestinal tract. Those with IBD experience a number of unqiue healthcare challenges. In addition to the provision of lifelong medications to reduce symptoms, multidisciplinary care that includes dietitians, psychologists/psychiatrists, and other allied healthcare professionals, improves outcomes for people living with IBD. There remains a paucity of evidence on the population-level burden of unmet healthcare needs in these patients. Previous research on healthcare needs in people with IBD is limited to the physician perspective, uses disease severity as a metric of unmet healthcare needs, includes only patients treated at tertiary care centres, or focuses solely on identifying overarching themes pertaining to unmet needs in IBD. There is need to use the patient perspective in research around unmet needs to ensure healthcare services address perceived needs.
Objectives of this project include:
- Exploring the prevalence of unmet healthcare needs among IBD patients
- Comparing unmet needs among those with IBD to those without
- Determining whether accessing regular medical care confounds this relationship
Stusy Data: We used data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS). The CCHS is a comprehensive, publicly available health survey that collects information on the health status, healthcare utilization, and social determinants of health among Canadians. By leveraging this dataset, we aim to identify and analyze the gaps in healthcare access and services experienced by individuals with IBD, contributing to a better understanding of the challenges faced by this population. We used the 2014 Canadian Community Health Survey, a population-representative cross-sectional survey with a multi-stage cluster randomized design. The 2014 version is the most recent, publicly available version that reports both respondents’ IBD status and perceived unmet health care needs.
Main Findings:
- 18% of people with IBD reported an unmet healthcare need within the preceding 12 months, compared with 11% of those without IBD
- Those with IBD were more likely to have an unmet healthcare need compared to those without IBD
- Adjusting for respondent-reported recent access to medical care slightly attenuated the association between IBD and unmet healthcare needs
- Owing to sample size limitations, we were unable to explore the types of unmet healthcare needs expereinced by those with IBD. Further work is needed to understand these unmet healthcare needs and how to best address them.
We provide a new population-level perspective on unmet healthcare needs, demonstrating the extent and prominence of gaps in the healthcare provided to individuals living with IBD. These insights that may help shape future healthcare policies and improve access to care for those living with IBD.