Abstract
BACKGROUND: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, commonly referred to as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was created to increase access to primary care, improve quality of care, and decrease healthcare costs. A key provision in the law that mandated expansion of state Medicaid programme changed when states were given the option to voluntarily expand Medicaid. Our study sought to measure the impact of ACA Medicaid expansion on preventable hospitalization (PH) rates, a measure of access to primary care.
METHODS: We performed an interrupted time series analysis of quarterly hospitalization rates across eight states from 2012 to 2015. Segmented regression analysis was utilized to determine the impact of policy reform on PH rates.
RESULTS: The Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion led to decreased rates of PH (improved access to care); however, the finding was not significant (coefficient estimate: -0.0059, CI -0.0225, 0.0107, p = 0.4856). Healthcare system characteristics, such as Medicaid spending per enrollee and Medicaid income eligibility, were associated with a significant decrease in rates of PH (improved access to care). However, the Medicaid-to-Medicare fee index (physician reimbursement) and states with a Democratic state legislature had a significant increase in rates of PH (poor access to care).
CONCLUSION: Health policy reform and healthcare delivery characteristics impact access to care. Researchers should continue evaluating such policy changes across more states over longer periods of time. Researchers should translate these findings into cost analysis for state policy-makers to make better-informed decisions for their constituents.
CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE: Ambulatory care-sensitive conditions are a feasible method for evaluating policy and measuring access to primary care. Policy alone cannot improve access to care. Other factors (trust, communication, policy-makers' motivations and objectives, etc.) must be addressed to improve access.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-6-2021
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-021-00730-0
Related Content
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available.
Correction to Table 1 in this article is available as an additional file listed at the end of this record.
Repository Citation
Brown, Elizabeth A.; White, Brandi M.; Jones, Walter J.; Gebregziabher, Mulugeta; and Simpson, Kit N., "Measuring the Impact of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion on Access to Primary Care Using an Interrupted Time Series Approach" (2021). Health and Clinical Sciences Faculty Publications. 17.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/clinicalsci_facpub/17
Additional file 1: List of Ambulatory Care Sensitive (ACS) conditions and ICD-9 codes used to define preventable hospitalizations.
Measuring-the-impact.pdf (561 kB)
Correction to Table 1
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Health Research Policy and Systems, v. 19, issue 1, article no. 77.
© The Author(s) 2021
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