Monitoring Physician Capacity Constraints

• Activity Number: 163
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, July 30, 2012 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Health Policy Statistics Section
• Author(s): Sandra Decker*+
• Companies: National Center for Health Statistics
• Keywords: Physicians ; Acceptance of new patients

Abstract

Some observers have expressed concern about the capacity of the existing healthcare workforce, especially the primary care workforce, to provide care to individuals expected to be newly insured due to implementation of provisions of the Affordable Care Act. This paper discusses the use of data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, 2011 Electronic Medical Records Supplement, to monitor healthcare workforce capacity as measured by the fraction of physicians accepting new patients. The percent of office-based physicians who accepted any new patients and new patients with particular sources of payment will be presented both nationally, and by state. Findings indicate that nearly 96% (95% confidence interval (CI) 95-97%) of office-based physicians accepted new patients in 2011, though the percent accepting new patients was lower for those in primary care specialties (about 93%, CI 92-95) compared to others (97%, CI 96-100). About 69% (CI 66-71) of physicians accepted new patients with Medicaid. This is lower than the percent accepting new self-pay patients (91%, CI 90-93), new Medicare patients (86%, CI 84-88), or new privately insured patients (83%, 81-85).