Traffic to Mass Safety-net Clinics Up 31%
For those with short memories, let’s review the bidding. The argument for the Massachusetts health plan was: Instead of providing free care to the uninsured at emergency rooms and safety-net clinics let’s insure them so that they can get more accessible, less costly care from regular physicians. The result: traffic to hospital emergency rooms in Massachusetts is higher than ever and now this:
The report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that the number of patients treated at the health centers rose 31 percent from 2005 to 2009. During the same period, the percent of uninsured patients at the clinics declined from 35.5 percent to about 20 percent.
Prediction: These clinics will reconfigure their operating procedures to begin functioning more like primary care providers.
This brings up a philosophical question: if everyone goes to the ER, is it still really an ER?
If this is what is happening in Massachusetts, what have they really accomplished?
Surveys have shown Mass. doctors don’t want to take the newly insured patients. Either their reimbursements are too low; of they are in a health plan with so few members the billing staff doesn’t want to deal another insurers with so few members.
So patients are now insured and are receiving care from lower cost providers in their own communities, how is that a bad thing? These clinics are already primary care providers and have been around for 40 years in some cases. ED use is still an issue but I federally qualified health center usage by insured patients is a different story.