Estimating the Supply of Medicaid-Enrolled PCPs Who Will See New Medicaid Patients

• Activity Number: 75
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 3, 2014 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Government Statistics Section
• Author(s): Cynthia Cors*+
• Keywords: Medicaid ; primary care physicians ; physician supply

Abstract

The ACA holds promise for individuals to have access to healthcare through the employer mandate, state health insurance exchanges, or through state-level expansion of the Medicaid program. Yet access to healthcare services is dependent upon physician supply. This paper estimates the number of Medicaid-enrolled PCPs who will see new Medicaid patients. It measures actual willingness (as reported in claims) to see new Medicaid patients using the unique National Provider Identifier of the sampled PCPs. Preliminary results based on Virginia Medicaid's fee-for-service claims obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, indicate fewer than 26% of PCPs saw new Medicaid patients in 2009. By 2012, only 17% were still seeing new patients. A paired t test of this panel data set indicates the number of new Medicaid patients seen by Medicaid-enrolled PCPs from 2009 to 2012 dropped significantly (p < 0.001) and this drop occurred primarily among Medicaid-enrolled PCPs seeing the most new Medicaid patients. This analysis will be replicated with claims data from other states giving policymakers better estimates of the number of Medicaid-enrolled PCPs who will see new Medicaid patients.