In rural areas, providers and Medicaid enrollees may face additional barriers in providing or accessing telehealth, even within states that have adopted supportive telehealth policies. This is particularly the case during a public health emergency such as COVID-19. This article offers one of the earliest estimates of telehealth provision to pregnant Medicaid enrollees during COVID-19,…
Medicaid faces significant policy and funding changes that could affect access to primary care, raising questions about the stability of the clinician workforce serving Medicaid enrollees. However, fluctuations in Medicaid participation may reflect changes in patient enrollment rather than frequent decisions by clinicians to enter or leave the program. Understanding how primary care clinicians maintain…
Geographic disparities in healthcare access remain a persistent challenge in Medicaid, prompting growing interest in area-level measures that can help identify communities with the greatest unmet needs. Multidimensional socioeconomic indexes, such as the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), may provide a more comprehensive way to target healthcare resources than traditional income-based measures alone. Understanding how these…
The Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) will invest $50 billion to strengthen healthcare access and workforce capacity in rural communities across the United States. As states develop proposals to access these funds, they need reliable data to understand the providers currently serving rural Medicaid populations and identify areas with workforce shortages. The US Medicaid Primary…
Community Health Centers (CHCs) serve nearly 1 in 6 Medicaid enrollees and provide perinatal care to about 560,000 people, playing a critical role in prenatal and postpartum care for disadvantaged populations. While 41% of CHCs—often larger centers with multidisciplinary teams—offer prenatal care to higher proportions of non-White or non-English-speaking patients, little is known about the…
Appropriate prenatal care is critical to ensuring safe childbirth, but many populations face barriers that create inequities in maternal health outcomes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth emerged as a promising way to expand access, therefore driving its rapid adoption. This shift highlights the need to better understand the workforce providing telehealth for pregnancy care. This…
Health disparities have worsened over the last 20 years in the United States, and research has exposed the role of health care systems in contributing to these disparities. Based on race/ethnicity, sex, sexual identity, socioeconomic status, and geography, communities face disproportionately higher disparities in access, diagnosis, and treatment, ultimately resulting in adverse health outcomes. This…
Primary care providers are less likely to accept Medicaid compared to other kinds of insurance. The medical school a primary care provider chooses to attend has been shown to impact other elements of their practice, but the impact on Medicaid participation is not well understood. This abstract describes a study that analyzed 2016 Medicaid claims…
Many patients without access to private insurance rely on primary care providers who take Medicaid to receive quality, affordable care. However, the number and proportion of primary care providers who take Medicaid varies widely by geographic location. This interactive map allows users to view the number and proportion of primary care providers who take Medicaid…
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted existing structural racism that widened gaps in access to care and health outcomes, disproportionately affecting racial and ethnic minorities. Research has shown that a racially and ethnically diverse workforce can be instrumental in addressing disparities. Lack of diversity in the public health workforce can occur from several factors, including underrepresentation of…
