Giving Urban Health Care Access Issues The Attention They Deserve In Telemedicine Reimbursement Policies

A May 2017 Wall Street Journal analysis highlights the plight of rural America: People there who are sick are getting sicker because health systems are struggling to deliver care in rural areas. The challenges are multifactorial, but a key driver is the availability of providers. Only 10 percent of physicians serve rural populations, and the number of specialists per capita is a third of the number that practice in urban areas. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) considers the per capita physician shortage to be an important health care access problem. In an effort to improve access to care, CMS has created preferential payment schedules including reimbursement for telemedicine services for patients located in geographic health professional shortage areas (HPSAs). But while geography is an important aspect of access to health care, it fails to accurately capture the relationship between supply (providers) and demand (patients) within an area. We are concerned that while rural America has access problems because there are not enough doctors, urban America has access problems because there are not enough appointments. We propose that appointment timeliness be used to frame the discussion around access to health care, as this approach better captures the relationship between the supply of health providers and the demand for their services—independent of geography. Urban And Rural Areas Face Similar Access Challenges Access challenges exist in both urban an...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured Health Equity appointment timeliness health care access Medicare reimbursement Telemedicine Source Type: blogs