Document Type

Manuscript

Submission Date

2020

Abstract

The literature has limited data on how women access health care after the traditional postpartum period (postpartum). Modeled after a paper by Bryant (2016), this project assesses the prevalence of primary care visits in the late postpartum period (LPP)(60- 730 days postpartum). Study objectives included (1) Identify demographics of general delivering population at UVMMC compared to patients with UVM-affiliated primary care provider (UVMPCP). (2) Understand how the general delivering population uses the UVMHN LPP (3) Among women with a UVM-affiliated PCP, identify the prevalence of preventive care visits in the LPP. (4) Identify characteristics associated with LPP visit attendance. Hypothesis: Women with an established PCP prior to pregnancy are more likely to attend preventive PCP LPP visits. This was a retrospective cohort study for all women who delivered at UVMMC between 7/1/2015-6/30/2017. Data was extracted from Epic EMR. During the study period, 4169 women had one singleton pregnancy, 3413 (82%) had a known PCP, and 1279 (31%) had UVMPCP. 2535 (61%) of all delivering singleton women and 1112 (87%) of UVMPCP women had at least one clinical visit within UVMHN in the LPP. 959 (75%) of UVMPCP women had a LPP PCP visit, and 382 patients (30%) had preventative PCP LPP visits. Our hypothesis was rejected (OR 0.930), but attending any LPP PCP visit was associated with having a PCP established prior to pregnancy (OR 1.684). Attending preventive PCP visit was associated with having the same delivering provider as PCP (OR 1.742), a pre-pregnancy PCP visit (OR 1.460), a PCP visit during prenatal time (OR 1.459), ED visit early postpartum period (OR 0.402), a fetal or neonatal demise (OR 0.445), being single (0.601), and with public insurance (OR 0.489). Further work in understanding these associations will be important in developing improved transition of care models and increasing overall engagement in women’s preventive medicine.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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