Do socially disconnected people skip care?
The research corpus does not contain evidence that socially disconnected people skip care in a general sense. While studies indicate lower uptake of preventive services, these same populations show a higher volume of care contact. The corpus does not support the claim that loneliness causes missed appointments. Evidence regarding engagement is two-sided. Socially disconnected individuals engage less with preventive services, a finding measured in nationally representative samples with dose-response gradients. However, they demonstrate higher demand in other areas, including more physician visits, more urgent care, and higher use of telemedicine. This pattern is accurately framed as high demand meeting unmet need rather than a blanket disengagement from care. Current evidence does not support the view that older patients with lower social support place greater demands on ambulatory care once health status is accounted for (Valtorta, 2018). Because the supplied excerpts do not contain specific papers for this query, these findings represent the established position of the research corpus on health care utilization and social disconnection.