What Are Medicaid Patients Going To Do When They Cannot Find A Doctor?

Survey: Half of Doctors Won't Take On New Medicaid Patients

With the Medicaid program poised to expand due to the Affordable Care Act, a new survey involving 1,399 medical offices in 15 large metropolitan markets shows that more than half of doctors won't accept new Medicaid patients.

Merritt-Hawkins, a Texas-based national healthcare consulting firm, surveyed doctors in five specialties — cardiology, dermatology, orthopedic surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, and family practice — and found that just 45.7 percent will accept new Medicaid patients.

That is down from 55.4 percent in 2009, before Obamacare was signed into law.

According to the survey's authors, "The rate at which physicians accept Medicaid can vary for a number of reasons. In some cases, reimbursement rates provided by Medicaid to particular specialists may be below their cost of providing services. If not actually below costs, Medicaid reimbursement often is relatively low compared to that offered by other payers, and therefore busy physicians may have no economic incentive to see Medicaid patients.

"In other cases, the process of billing for and receiving Medicaid payment can be problematic and some physicians choose to avoid it."

The Medicaid program is one of the major ways Obamacare expands coverage, and 7 million additional people are expected to be added to the program this year, although they won't necessarily be able to access healthcare, according to a report on the survey from the Heritage Foundation.

"By further expanding this broken program, Obamacare will only exacerbate the situation, continuing to harm many low-income Americans who have no option other than Medicaid," according to Heritage Foundation policy analyst Kevin Dayaratna.

The survey found that last year Boston had the highest rate of Medicaid acceptance by physicians in the 15 markets, 73 percent, followed by Portland, Ore., with 63.5 percent.

Dallas had the lowest rate, 23 percent, and Minneapolis was next with 23.6 percent.

But rates among some specialties were far lower than the overall rates in some metro areas. Just 7 percent of cardiologists in Minneapolis accept new Medicaid patients, no dermatologists in Dallas will take them on, and only 20 percent of doctors in family practice in Denver accept new Medicaid patients.

In contrast, the average rate of Medicare acceptance in the five specialties in the 15 markets was 76 percent, including 98 percent in Boston and 95.8 percent in Detroit.

The Merritt-Hawkins report concludes: "As millions of the previously uninsured obtain healthcare coverage through the ACA, ways will need to be found to ensure access to physicians."