Medicaid patients with PCP barriers flock to ED--more coming soon

[CAL/AAEM News Service - BP]

Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: CAL/AAEM:
California Chapter of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine

March 15, 2012

 

Medicaid patients with PCP barriers flock to ED--more coming soon

 

FierceHealthcare.com <http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/> 

 

By Alicia Caramenico

 

 

Medicaid patients face more nonfinancial barriers to timely primary care
than those with private insurance, which in turn make them more likely to
visit the emergency department, according to a study in Annals of Emergency
Medicine.

 

http://www.annemergmed.com/webfiles/images/journals/ymem/FA-PTCheung.pdf

 

The study found more than 16 percent of Medicare patients reported one or
more barriers to primary care, compared to 8.9 of those privately insured.
Moreover, Medicaid patients were more than twice as likely to use the ED
(39.6 percent) than privately insured patients (17.7 percent).

 

When taking into account barriers to primary care, Medicaid patients still
had higher ED utilization (51.3 percent versus 24.6 percent for one barrier
and 61.2 percent versus 28.9 percent for two barriers).

 

Barriers included not being able to get an appointment soon enough, having
to wait too long in the physician's office and no transportation, among
other challenges, according to the study.

 

Noting that Medicaid patients who have primary care physicians still
reported significant barriers to seeing their doctor, researchers warned
that expanding Medicaid coverage to more low-income patients may boost ED
visits--unless nonfinancial barriers to primary care are eliminated.

 

"Our findings are particularly worrisome in light of the additional 16
million people who will be added to the Medicaid rolls over the next
decade," senior author Adit Ginde of the University of Colorado School of
Medicine said in a statement.

 

Meanwhile, to help curb the "overuse and abuse" of costly emergency care,
Washington hospitals will no longer receive Medicaid reimbursement for any
"unnecessary" emergency room visits starting next month.

 

 

Brian Potts MD, MBA
Managing Editor, CAL/AAEM News Service



 

 

Contact us at: calaaem.news.service at gmail.com

For more articles, visit our
<http://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/public/calaaem/> archives. 

 <mailto:somcaaem at uci.edu> To
<https://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/calaaem>  unsubscribe from this
list, visit our mail server.

Copyright (C) 2012. The California Chapter of the American Academy of
Emergency Medicine (CAL/AAEM). All rights reserved.

CAL/AAEM, a nonprofit professional organization for emergency physicians,
operates the CAL/AAEM News Service solely as an educational resource for
physicians. Dissemination of an article by CAL/AAEM News Service does not
imply endorsement, agreement, or recommendation by CAL/AAEM News Service,
CAL/AAEM, or AAEM.

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/public/calaaem/attachments/20120319/ca6d4fad/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 19903 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/public/calaaem/attachments/20120319/ca6d4fad/attachment-0001.jpe