Healthcare Utilisation and Barriers and Facilitators of Healthcare Access for Young People With Intellectual Disability: A Systematic Review.
Felicia Kreps, Shalini Wijekulasuriya, Yvonne Zurynski and 1 others
PMID 40851499WHAT IT FOUND
Young people with intellectual disability have higher rates of hospital admissions, emergency visits, and longer stays than peers.
Key barriers include staff lacking specific skills, communication difficulties, and low family income. Facilitators include visual aids, simple language, and acknowledging parent expertise.
Key findings
01Young people with intellectual disability generally had a higher proportion of hospital admissions, ED visits, hospital LOS, mental health outpatient visits, mortality, 30-day readmission and complications of care, compared to young people without intellectual disability.
02The most frequently identified barriers in the vulnerable domain were lack of specialised knowledge and skills in health providers, ineffective or insensitive communication, and issues with the physical environment.
03Common facilitators for accessing and engagement with healthcare included the use of visual aids and communication tools for the young person with intellectual disability and having a diagnosis of intellectual disability that met the criteria for service eligibility.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The review only included English-language studies from high-income countries, which may limit generalisability to other contexts. Many included studies relied on administrative datasets or clinical samples, which may miss individuals with minimal healthcare access and underestimate utilisation in some populations. The identification of barriers and facilitators relied on author reporting in the original studies, which may have been biased. It was infeasible to properly account for the influence of coexisting conditions (such as autism or epilepsy) on barriers and facilitators due to the high proportion of studies including these comorbidities.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that higher healthcare utilisation is solely due to the intellectual disability itself. The review notes that comorbid conditions like autism and epilepsy, as well as socio-economic factors and provider skill gaps, significantly influence these patterns, so attributing outcomes to disability alone is incorrect.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →