Study: 25% of Medicaid Docs Provide At Least 75% of Care
About a quarter of the practitioners in Medicaid managed care organization networks provide more than three-quarters of the services used by members, according to an article published by researchers affiliated with Yale and Cornell Universities in the journal Health Affairs this month. Experts say that this concentration of care likely limits access to care for members, and health plans need to do more to make sure their networks aren’t made up of so-called “ghost providers.”
The article, which analyzed claims and enrollment data from Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan and Tennessee during 2015-17, found that care delivery is highly concentrated in both primary care and specialists. However, the authors caution that their study of the states “might not generalize nationally” and only studied four specialties.