Uncontrolled diabetes and healthcare utilisation: a bivariate Latent Markov model

Abstract

Although uncontrolled diabetes (UD) or poor glycaemic control is a widespread condition with potentially life‐threatening consequences, there is sparse evidence of its effects on health care utilisation. We jointly model the propensities to consume health care and UD by employing an innovative bivariate latent Markov model that allows for dynamic unobserved heterogeneity, movements between latent states and the endogeneity of UD. We estimate the effects of UD on primary and secondary health care consumption using a panel dataset of rich administrative records from Spain and measure UD using a biomarker. We find that, conditional on time‐varying unobservables, UD does not have a statistically significant direct effect on health care use (...)