Preventive Service Usage and New Chronic Disease Diagnoses: Using PCORnet Data to Identify Emerging Trends, United States, 2018–2022

Abstract

Background Data modernization efforts to strengthen surveillance capacity could help assess trends in use of preventive services and diagnoses of new chronic disease during the COVID-19 pandemic, which broadly disrupted health care access. Methods This cross-sectional study examined electronic health record data from US adults aged 21 to 79 years in a large national research network (PCORnet), to describe use of 8 preventive health services (N = 30,783,825 patients) and new diagnoses of 9 chronic diseases (N = 31,588,222 patients) during 2018 through 2022. Joinpoint regression assessed significant trends, and health debt was calculated comparing 2020 through 2022 volume to prepandemic (2018 and 2019) levels. Results From 2018 to 2022, use of some preventive services increased (hemoglobin A1c and lung computed tomography, both P