Availability of New Medicaid Patient Appointments and the Role of Rural Health Clinics.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To examine the willingness to accept new Medicaid patients among certified rural health clinics (RHCs) and other nonsafety net rural providers.

Data sources

Experimental (audit) data from a 10-state study of primary care practices, county-level information from the Area Health Resource File, and RHC information from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Study design

We generate appointment rates for rural and nonrural areas by patient-payer type (private, Medicaid, self-pay) to then motivate our focus on within-rural variation by clinic type (RHC vs. non-RHC). Multivariate linear models test for statistical differences and assess the estimates' sensitivity to the inclusion of control variables.

Data collection

The primary data are from a larg

SUBMITTER: Richards MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4799893 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature