Obese patients living in rural areas of West Virginia were substantially less likely than were their urban and suburban counterparts to have bariatric surgery, according to findings from a study comparing outcomes in two patient groups.
This discrepancy is attributed to a difference between rural and nonrural patients in type of insurance coverage. In this 2-year study, rural patients were nearly five times more likely to be covered by West Virginia Medicaid than were patients living in nonrural areas of the state, said Kristie L. Bergmann, PhD, of the department of behavioral medicine and psychiatry, West Virginia University, Morgantown, and her associates. The findings were published in Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases (2017;13[4]:632-6), the journal of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.
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Previous research has identified rural patients’ lack of insurance as a barrier to health care. “Our results suggest that insurance denial represents a successive barrier. Despite being insured, rural individuals may be barred from surgery if insurance carriers do not offer it as a covered benefit, deny approval, or require indomitable prerequisites for surgery,” Dr. Bergmann and her associates said.
They examined the associations among rural status, access to bariatric surgery, and surgical outcomes in West Virginia in part because the state’s residents “have been consistently ranked as the most obese population in the United States, with approximately 35.1% of residents meeting criteria for obesity.” West Virginia also has the highest rates of diabetes (13%) and hypertension (41%) in the United States.
At the same time, rural populations are known to have decreased access to all forms of health care and specifically to bariatric surgery. This makes rural West Virginians “a particularly vulnerable population of interest,” the investigators said.
They performed a retrospective cohort study involving 122 obese patients seeking bariatric surgery at their university’s medical center during 2012-2014. A total of 97% of these patients were white, 83% were women, and the mean age was 47 years. Only 82 of the 122 study participants underwent bariatric surgery: 77 had Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and 5 had sleeve gastrectomy.
Rural residents were significantly less likely to undergo bariatric surgery than were nonrural patients, but coverage by West Virginia Medicaid explained 83.6% of this difference. When Medicaid patients were excluded from the analysis, nonrural status no longer predicted the use of bariatric surgery.
Moreover, when Medicaid coverage was controlled for, rural status had no effect on the effectiveness of bariatric surgery. Patients residing in rural areas had the same attendance at follow-up visits and the same reduction in body mass index at 6 months and at 12 months as did nonrural patients.
In addition, patients who had higher levels of education and who worked full-time were more likely to undergo bariatric surgery, but overall, rural patients were more likely to have comorbidities, disability, and lower rates of full-time work. “An argument can be made that rural individuals may have a greater medical need for bariatric surgery, as obesity and associated health conditions may contribute to lower rates of employment. Unfortunately, barring these patients from receiving care may reinforce a cycle of disability and declining health status,” Dr. Bergmann and her associates noted.
This study was limited in that it had a relatively small sample size, particularly in analyses that excluded Medicaid recipients. It also had a follow-up of only 1 year, so longer-term outcomes of bariatric surgery could not be assessed. “Our sample is also predominantly Caucasian and may have unique culturally-based characteristics” that limit the generalizability of the study findings, they added.
No specific sponsor was cited for this study. Dr. Bergmann and her associates reported having no relevant financial disclosures.