Survey: Practitioners Seeing More Medicaid Patients Under ACA
A new survey finds that while most primary care providers (PCPs) are seeing more patients since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage expansions, especially those newly insured or covered by Medicaid, they felt that their ability to provide quality care has not diminished in the last year.
However, the survey also found that many PCPs are unaware of the specifics of the law, including provisions that increased payment amounts to encourage the acceptance of Medicaid and Medicare patients.
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The Kaiser Family Foundation/Commonwealth Fund 2015 National Survey of Primary Care Providers, conducted from January to March of 2015, asked PCPs about their views on the ACA, and their experiences with the changes it has made to healthcare delivery and payment.
Fifty nine percent of physicians and 64% of other PCPs reported having seen a greater number of patients covered by Medicaid or otherwise previously uncovered patients since January 2014. Most providers reported that this increase had no effect on the quality of their provided care.
PCPs did report, however, that they felt that the time they spent with individual patients and the time spent dealing with insurance administration issues have worsened.
Many PCPs, the survey found, were unaware of the status of their home state’s Medicaid expansion, with nearly 4 of every 10 PCPs reporting they did not know the status, or answering incorrectly when asked about the status.
Nearly half of PCPs were also unaware of specific reforms in the ACA that encouraged greater acceptance of Medicaid and Medicare patients, including one provision that increased Medicare payments by 10%, or another provision that increased Medicaid payments to math those of Medicare between 2013 and 2014. Overall, 47% of physicians reported that they were not aware of the bumps in payment.
Overall, about 52% of PCPs reported an unfavorable view of the ACA, although opinions of the law were shown to correlate strongly to political party affiliation.
—Michael Potts
Reference:
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and The Commonwealth Fund. Experiences and attitudes of primary care providers under the first year of ACA coverage expansion. Kaiser Family Foundation web site. https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/experiences-and-attitudes-of-primary-care-providers-under-the-first-year-of-aca-coverage-expansion.pdf. Accessed June 24, 2015.