Medicare physician payment reform: its effect on access to care

This study analyzed a specific indicator condition, congestive heart failure (CHF), to see if there is evidence that physician payment reform (PPR) has had an effect on access to care for Medicare beneficiaries. If there was a decrease in access to ambulatory care services associated with PPR, one would expect to see an increase in hospitalizations for CHF in the period after PPR was implemented This analysis examined the trend in rates of hospitalization for CHF for the overall Medicare population and for selected vulnerable subgroups. No significant discontinuity was found in hospitalizations for CHF with the implementation of PPR.     

Physician payment reform under Medicare: monitoring utilization and access

The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) of 1989 brought about significant changes in physician payment policy under Medicare. A major component of physician payment reform was the implementation on January 1, 1992, of the Medicare fee schedule (MFS). The Secretary of Health and Human Services is required to monitor and report annually on the impact of the changes in physician payment on access to and utilization of health care services. This article provides an overview of the 1993 Report to Congress. First, the article discusses the changes made in physician payment policy as well as the complexities involved in assessing the effects of the MFS. Next, the article discusses the approaches that were implemented in the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) to generate timely data to monitor and evaluate the impact of physician payment reform on Medicare beneficiaries. Last, the article describes six analyses that were designed to provide differing perspectives for understanding the impact of the OBRA 1989 physician payment changes on access and utilization. Some of the most salient results of these analyses are presented, including preliminary data from the first year during which the MFS was in effect.     

Assessing consistency among indices to measure socioeconomic barriers to health care access

Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology - Many places within rural America lack ready access to health care facilities. Barriers to access can be both spatial and non-spatial....     

Shifting the paradigm: monitoring access in Medicare managed care

Medicare managed care enrollment growth points to the need to develop an approach for monitoring access to care for the increasing number of beneficiaries who use these arrangements. This article describes the issues to be addressed in designing a system for monitoring managed care plan enrollees' ability to obtain needed medical care on a timely basis. We review components of the monitoring approach used for traditional fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare, including the conceptual framework, data, measures, and subgroups targeted in monitoring efforts, and discuss the adaptation of that approach for monitoring access in Medicare managed care.     

Family structure, socioeconomic status, and access to health care for children

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that among children of lower socioeconomic status (SES), children of single mothers would have relatively worse access to care than children in two-parent families, but there would be no access difference by family structure among children in higher SES families. DATA SOURCES: The National Health Interview Surveys of 1993-95, including 63,054 children. STUDY DESIGN: Logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between the child's family structure (single-mother or two-parent family) and three measures of health care access and utilization: having no physician visits in the past year, having no usual source of health care, and having unmet health care needs. To examine how these relationships varied at different levels of SES, the models were stratified on maternal education level as the SES variable. The stratified models adjusted for maternal employment, child's health status, race and ethnicity, and child's age. Models were fit to examine the additional effects of health insurance coverage on the relationships between family structure, access to care, and SES. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Children of single mothers, compared with children living with two parents, were as likely to have had no physician visit in the past year; were slightly more likely to have no usual source of health care; and were more likely to have an unmet health care need. These relationships differed by mother's education. As expected, children of single mothers had similar access to care as children in two-parent families at high levels of maternal education, for the access measures of no physician visits in the past year and no usual source of care. However, at low levels of maternal education, children of single mothers appeared to have better access to care than children in two-parent families. Once health insurance was added to adjusted models, there was no significant socioeconomic variation in the relationships between family structure and physician visits or usual source of care, and there were no significant disparities by family structure at the highest levels of maternal education. There were no family structure differences in unmet needs at low maternal education, whereas children of single mothers had more unmet needs at high levels of maternal education, even after adjustment for insurance coverage. CONCLUSIONS: At high levels of maternal education, family structure did not influence physician visits or having a usual source of care, as expected. However, at low levels of maternal education, single mothers appeared to be better at accessing care for their children. Health insurance coverage explained some of the access differences by family structure. Medicaid is important for children of single mothers, but children in two-parent families whose mothers are less educated do not always have access to that resource. Public health insurance coverage is critical to ensure adequate health care access and utilization among children of less educated mothers, regardless of family structure.     

Long-term care hospitals under Medicare: facility-level characteristics

Though accounting for only a small percentage of total Medicare spending, long-term care hospitals (LTCHs) (defined as having an average length of stay [LOS] of 25 days or more) have been growing, in number and in Medicare expenditures, at a rapid rate in recent years. Because they have not been widely studied, we conducted research to describe the characteristics of this increasingly important Medicare provider type. We found that most LTCHs specialize in the provision of respiratory care or rehabilitation. Information from this study can help inform the development of a Medicare prospective payment system for LTCHs.     

Medicare advantage and dialysis facility choice

Objective

To compare the characteristics of dialysis facilities used by traditional Medicare (TM) and Medicare advantage (MA) enrollees with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD).

Data Sources

We used 20% TM claims and 100% MA encounter data from 2018 and publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Study Design

We compared the characteristics of the dialysis facilities treating TM and MA patients in the same ZIP code, adjusting for patient characteristics. The outcome variables were facility ownership, distance to the facility, and several measures of facility quality.

Data Collection/Extraction

We identified point prevalent dialysis patients as of July 15, 2018.

Principal Findings

Compared to TM patients in the same ZIP code, MA patients were 1.84 percentage points more likely to be treated at facilities owned by the largest two dialysis organizations and 1.85 percentage points less likely to be treated at an independently owned facility. MA patients went to further and lower quality facilities than TM patients in the same ZIP code. However, these differences in facility quality were modest. For example, while the mean dialysis facility mortality rate was 21.85, the difference in mortality rates at facilities treating MA and TM patients in the same ZIP code was 0.67 deaths per 100 patient-years. Similarly, MA patients went to facilities that were, on average, 0.15 miles further than TM patients in the same ZIP code.

Conclusion

MA enrollees with ESKD were more likely than TM enrollees in the same ZIP code to use the dialysis facilities owned by the two largest chains, travel further for care, and receive care at lower quality facilities. While the magnitude of differences in facility distance and quality was modest, the direction of these results underscores the importance of monitoring dialysis network adequacy as ESKD MA enrollment continues to grow.     

Measuring quality of care under Medicare and Medicaid

The Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) approach to measuring quality of care uses an accepted definition of quality, explicit domains of measurement, and a formal validation procedure that includes face validity, construct validity, reliability, clinical validation, and tests for usefulness. The indicators of quality for Medicare and Medicaid patients span the range of service types, medical conditions, and payment systems and rest on a variety of data systems. Some have already been incorporated into operational systems while others are scheduled for incorporation over the next 3 years.     

Health policies and the relationships between socioeconomic status,access to health care,and health

Health policies tend to focus on improving the access to health care of persons of low-socioeconomic status to improve their health. This commentary argues that health policies directly directed at health and socioeconomic status (and other components of individual welfare) will also be effective if one wants to improve the well-being of the poor.     

Survival of breast cancer patients in Connecticut in relation to socioeconomic and health care access indicators

The purpose of this study of 16,931 black and white Connecticut women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 1988–1995 was to examine survival in relation to surrogate or proxy indicators of both socioeconomic status (SES) and access to primary care. Patients were followed through 1998, and the risk of death was elevated for the lowest (vs. highest) SES category independent of stage at diagnosis and other characteristics, especially among patients diagnosed before age 65 years. The health care access indicator was not associated with risk of death when other patient characteristics (including the SES variable and stage at diagnosis) were taken into account. Unexplained elevations, relative to the rest of the state, in risk of death were found for patients diagnosed while living in two of the state’s four largest cities.