Abstract

Introduction: Rural cancer survivors often face greater barriers to treatment, which may translate into worse satisfaction with health care. Objective: To examine rural versus urban differences in satisfaction with health care among Medicare cancer survivors. Methods: Data are from the 2020 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS). Rao-Scott chi-square analyses were conducted to examine rural versus urban inequities in satisfaction with 9 dimensions of health care (health professionals’ concern for health, information about what was wrong, ease/convenience from home, ease of obtaining answers over telephone, getting needs taken care of at same location, availability of specialists, overall quality, and out-of-pocket costs, and availability of care at night/on weekends). Multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted to test for rural/urban differences while adjusting for race/ethnicity, gender, marital status, educational attainment, health insurance (traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage, dual Medicaid coverage, employer, or self-purchased insurance), and self-rated overall health. Results: Rural cancer survivors were less satisfied with the ease/convenience of getting to health professionals (93.35% rural and 96.87% urban) and less satisfied with getting all health care needs taken care of at the same location (88.32% rural and 92.22% urban). These rural/urban differences persisted when adjusting for other factors. Conclusions: Health care providers serving rural areas may need to consider new strategies to satisfy some of the unique needs of rural cancer survivors, such as better organizing services at single clinic sites and utilizing telehealth when feasible to reduce the need to travel for in-person services.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Notes/Citation Information

© The Author(s) 2024

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1177/21501319241240342

Funding Information

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was supported by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under cooperative agreement # U1CRH30041. The information, conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and no endorsement by FORHP, HRSA, HHS, or the University of Kentucky is intended or should be inferred.

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