Patient-level factors associated with receipt of preventive care in the safety net

Prevention is critical to optimizing health, yet most people do not receive all recommended preventive services. As the complexity of preventive recommendations increases, there is a need for new measurements to capture the degree to which a person is up to date, and identify individual-level barriers and facilitators to receiving needed preventive care. We used electronic health record data from a national network of community health centers (CHCs) in the United States (US) during 2014–2017 to measure patient-level up-to-date status with preventive ratios (measuring up-to-date person-time denoted as a percent) for 12 preventive services and an aggregate preventive index. We use negative binomial regression to identify factors associated with up-to-date preventive care. We assessed 267,767 patients across 165 primary care clinics. Mean preventive ratios ranged from 8.7% for Hepatitis C screening to 83.3% for blood pressure screening. The mean aggregate preventive index was 43%. Lack of health insurance, smoking, and homelessness were associated with lower preventive ratios for most cancer and cardiovascular screenings (p < 0.05). Having more ambulatory visits, better continuity of care, and enrollment in the patient portal were positively associated with the aggregate preventive index (p < 0.05) and higher preventive ratios for all services (p < 0.05) except chlamydia and HIV screening. Overall, receipt of preventive services was low. CHC patients experience many barriers to receiving needed preventive care, but certain healthcare behaviors – regular visits, usual provider continuity, and patient portal enrollment – were consistently associated with more up-to-date preventive care. These associations should inform future efforts to improve preventive care delivery.