The Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General issued at troubling report on Medicaid Managed Care Plans on December 10, 2014. This report is significant in that the OIG estimates that the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion will add 18 million more people to the rolls by 2018.
The OIG found that slightly more than half of providers could not offer appointments to enrollees. Thirty-five percent could not be found at the location listed by the plan; 8 percent were at the location but said that they were not participating in the plan; 8 percent were not accepting new patients. The median wait for appointments time was 2 weeks. Twenty-eight percent of providers had wait times of more than 1 month, and 10 percent had wait times longer than 2 months. Primary care providers were less likely to offer an appointment than specialists, but specialists tended to have longer wait times. The OIG noted that most state Medicaid programs require appointments within a month of the request.
Full report at: https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-02-13-00670.pdf
Synopsis courtesy of Marilyn Singleton, MD, JD @MSingletonMDJD
