Health Care Access and Use Among Adults With and Without Vision Impairment: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2018.

Introduction: Adults with vision impairment may have unique needs when accessing health care to maintain good health. Our study examined the relationship between vision status and access to and use of health care.

Methods: We analyzed data on adults aged 18 years or older who participated in the 2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Vision impairment was identified by a yes response to the question "Are you blind or do you have serious difficulty seeing, even when wearing glasses?" Survey questions assessed health care access over the past year (having health insurance coverage, a usual health care provider, or unmet health care needs because of cost) and use of health care during that period (routine checkup and dental visit). We estimated age-adjusted prevalence of our outcomes of interest and used bivariate analyses to compare estimates of the outcomes by vision impairment status.

Results: The prevalence of self-reported vision impairment was 5.3%. Compared with adults without impaired vision, adults with vision impairment had a lower prevalence of having health insurance coverage (80.6% vs 87.6%), a usual health care provider (71.9% vs 75.7%), or a dental visit in the past year (52.9% vs 67.2%) and a higher prevalence of having an unmet health care need in the past year because of cost (29.2% vs 12.6%).

Conclusion: Adults with vision impairment reported lower access to and use of health care than those without. Further research can better identify and understand barriers to care to improve access to and use of health care among this population.