Study Highlights Gaps in Insurance Acceptance Between Psychiatrists, Other Physicians

Between 2007 and 2016, psychiatrists who were accepting new patients participated in insurance networks at lower rates than physicians who were not psychiatrists. This was one of several conclusions of areport published yesterday inPsychiatric Services, which also revealed that the gap in insurance acceptance between psychiatrists and nonpsychiatrists was wider for Medicare and Medicaid than for private insurance.“The reluctance of psychiatrists to participate in insurance networks substantially threatens mental health access, equity, and public health,” wrote Andrew D. Carlo, M.D., M.P.H., of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and colleagues. “Although our findings highlight this prob lem more clearly than have previous studies, our observations cannot directly inform an overarching strategy to mitigate the deleterious market forces that have led to the inequities and inadequacies in the contemporary U.S. mental health care delivery system.” Carlo and colleagues analyzed 10 years of data (January 2007 to December 2016) from theNational Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS), an annual survey that provides information about medical services in the United States collected from medical records. From these data, they calculated the differences between psychiatrists and other physicians in the sample. They next calculated the proportions of psychiatrists across all years and in two-year groupings between 2007 and 2016 who accepted Medicare, Medicaid,...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: access to care insurance Medicaid Medicare National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey nonpsychiatrists Psychiatric Services self-pay Source Type: research