Smoking-Attributable Doctor Visits and Emergency Room Utilization and Costs by California’s Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community

ABSTRACT

The lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) community is known to smoke at greater rates than the general population, but there has been no study estimating the impact of cigarette smoking on healthcare utilization and costs in the LGB population. Using data from the 2005–2014 California Health Interview Surveys, we determine smoking-attributable healthcare utilization and costs among California’s LGB-identified community. Our findings indicate that lesbian/bisexual women who smoke incur excess doctor visits and emergency room visits compared to their never smoking counterparts. No statistically significant differences were found for gay/bisexual men. Annual smoking-attributable costs were $58.3 million for the California LGB community (2019 dollars).

KEYWORDS:

• Smoking
• healthcare costs
• healthcare utilization
• tobacco
• LGB community
• lesbian
• gay
• bisexual

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

These analyses are based on analyses of confidential data from the California Health Interview Survey (information available at: https://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/chis/data/Pages/confidential.aspx) and public use files from the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (available at: https://meps.ahrq.gov/data_stats/download_data_files.jsp).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program under Grant number [22RT-0120].