В Миннесоте рост пропусков детских приемов на 80% из-за операций ИЦЕ

Missed pediatric appointments spiked during ICE activity in Minnesota Key takeaways: - Operation Metro Surge began on Dec. 1, 2025, in Minneapolis and St. Paul and concluded Feb. 12, 2026. - Missed appointments among Spanish-speaking families rose 80% from previous years during the surge. Missed appointments and reschedule requests spiked at pediatric outpatient facilities in Minnesota during increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity last winter, data show. Hispanic/Latino and Spanish-speaking families were disproportionately affected, according to findings published in Pediatrics. “I saw a precipitous drop in my clinic patients during the peak Operation Metro Surge timeframe,” Asitha D. L. Jayawardena, MD, MPH, FACS, a pediatric otolaryngologist at Children’s Minnesota, told Healio. “These were disproportionately Hispanic and Somali families, so I decided to run a study to further evaluate this trend.” Jayawardena and colleagues investigated the rate of missed appointments and reschedule requests at two pediatric practices in Minneapolis and St. Paul from Oct. 1, 2023, through March 14, 2026. Operation Metro Surge began on Dec. 1, 2025, and expanded on Jan. 6, 2026. Two civilians were shot and killed by federal agents during the operation, which marked a high point of social disruption, Jayawardena and colleagues wrote. The immigration enforcement period was scaled back on Feb. 12. The researchers noted that trends in missed appointments were stable before Operation Metro Surge began, with a seasonal pattern that was likely due to holidays and winter weather. But they saw a drastic change in trends when Operation Metro Surge began. Overall, the researchers identified 129,545 appointments that were missed or rescheduled throughout the study period, with 15,611 taking place after Operation Metro Surge commenced. The rate of missed appointments was “significantly” higher from Dec. 1, 2025, through Feb. 12, 2026, compared with the same period during the previous 2 years (28.6% vs. 23.9% in 2023-2024 and 25.2% in 2024-2025; P < .001), the researchers wrote. Compared with previous years, missed appointments during Operation Metro Surge increased 51.2% among Hispanic and Latino patients (31.3% vs. 20.7%), 80.4% among Spanish-speaking patients (34.1% vs. 18.9%) and 53.1% among families who needed an interpreter (28.1% vs. 18.4%; P < .001 for all three). The rate of missed appointments tripled among patients with Medicaid (30.5% vs. 9.2%; P < .001). Jayawardena and colleagues reported an increase in missed appointments for well-child visits, scheduled outpatient visits and same day/walk-in visits (P < .001). They did not report a significant change in telehealth appointments. Reschedule requests increased overall during Metro Surge, although the researchers did not notice significant changes in reschedule requests among Hispanic/Latino or Spanish-speaking families. In an interrupted-time series analysis, the researchers found an additional 3.2 missed appointments per 100 appointments scheduled during Operation Metro Surge. They also reported an increase of 11.5 (95% CI, 8-14.9) additional missed appointments per 100 scheduled appointments among Hispanic and Latino families, an additional 16.8 (95% CI, 12.7-21) missed appointments among Spanish-speaking families and an additional 10.8 (95% CI, 7.9-13.7) missed appointments among families who needed interpretation. “I was surprised both by how widespread this was and how significantly it affected our Spanish-speaking families,” Jayawardena said. Jayawardena characterized the connection between ICE activity and missed health care appointments as extremely strong. The researchers ran rigorous statistical evaluations to prevent confounding from seasonal illnesses and winter weather. “All pediatricians should know that fear from immigrant enforcement profoundly affects our children’s access to care, specifically Hispanic kids,” Jayawardena said. “The long-term effects from this access disparity won’t be known for decades.” For more information: Asitha D. L. Jayawardena, MD, MPH, FACS, is a pediatric otolaryngologist and scientific director of ENT and Facial Plastic Surgery at Children’s Minnesota, as well as an associate professor in the department of otolaryngology – head and neck surgery at University of Minnesota Medical School. He can be reached at [email protected].