Health Care Contact Days, Care Experience, and Out-of-Pocket Spending Among Traditional Medicare Patients (JAMA)

By Editor, Concierge Medicine Today on March 20, 2025

These results suggest that contact days, which reflect both patient need and care efficiency, represent a dimension of patient experience that is complementary to existing measures. Clinicians, researchers, and policymakers could use contact days to evaluate interventions and reduce excess contact days for patients by avoiding unnecessary care, improving care coordination, and shifting care to the home.¹

By JAMA Internal Medicine, Research Letter

Health care contact days—spent obtaining care outside of the home—can represent needed care and place burdens on older adults and caregivers.¹^–3 For older Medicare beneficiaries, studies show that contact days vary by factors beyond medical need, suggesting modifiable overuse and underuse.⁴^–6 Understanding how contact days relate to other dimensions of patient experience could inform better use of these days. This study used nationally representative data to assess relationships between contact days and patients’ care satisfaction, ease in managing care, and out-of-pocket spending.

Citation

Daley NE, Orav EJ, Ganguli I. Health Care Contact Days, Care Experience, and Out-of-Pocket Spending Among Traditional Medicare Patients. JAMA Intern Med. Published online March 17, 2025. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.8517