Predictor Analysis for Disease Diagnosis as a Means of Decreasing Long Term Health Care Spending

The US Health care cost projections is almost 4.3 trillion dollars annually by 2017. Medicare spending projections indicate insolvency by 2016. Preventing this insolvency requires recognizing and addressing future expenditures through early stage disease diagnosis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and identify key predictors to early disease diagnosis and limitations to health care access while providing validation to previous disease indicator research.;A Central Florida eClinical Works electronic medical record database containing 1,390 individuals with 14,174 office visits was queried to determine the prevalence of diagnoses for hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Comparisons of the prevalence rates with national statistics indicate significantly higher levels in the electronic medical record and a reversal in gender statistics. Further, the analysis found a significant under reporting of obesity and that obesity levels exceed national statistics. Utilizing factor analysis, discriminant analysis, and multiple regressions indicated that correlations and predictability exists between the disease processes. Specifically, individuals with a diagnosis of diabetes had 96.2% and 97.1% incidence of hypertension and heart disease, respectively. Similarly, 99.8% of the individuals diagnosed with hypertension had heart disease, and 94.3% of the individuals diagnosed with heart disease had hypertension. Further, 85.3% of individuals had some form of insurance, which indicates that insurance correlates with seeking care.;The key findings indicate a need for enhancements to electronic medical record to improve the quality of care through automatic disease indicator reporting to providers. This provides the opportunity for the provider to address any health care issue with the patient at the time of the office visit. Further, providers need to ensure complete and accurate reporting of all associated international classification of disease codes (ICD) and the associated current procedural terminology codes (CPT) to ensure proper payments from CMS and private insurance.;Limitations in the available variables prevented some analysis with national statistics. Indications for future study involve validation of the under reporting and the variance with national statistics. Further, future study on the effects of fear as a deterrent to seeking care may identify addressable factors for health care providers.