Hospital and physician office visits increase thanks to the Affordable Care Act
When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is fully implemented, hospital outpatient departments will see a 2.6 percent increase in visits and primary care providers will see a 3.8 percent increase in visits, according to a new Commonwealth Fund analysis.
The report assumed there would be no changes to the Affordable Care Act and that Medicaid expansion would occur in each state.
The researchers estimated emergency room visits would increase 2.2 percent and inpatient hospital visits would increase 3.1 percent.
They estimated that 17 states would see increases in primary care visits that exceed 4 percent, while seven states will see increases of more than 5 percent. They also projected modest increases in medical and surgery specialty use and outpatient care utilization.
Prescription drug use is expected to increase less than 2.5 percent in each state except for New Mexico and Oregon, while increases in inpatient services will vary widely across states.
The authors noted that increases in visits per provider might not contribute to worse access for patients because of differences in utilization patterns and medical practices. They mentioned areas with more primary care doctors have been found to lead to longer delays in gaining access to care.
“It is critical that the expansion of health insurance coverage leads to improved access to care for those who were previously uninsured and does not limit access for those who already have coverage,” the authors wrote. “Our results suggest that the current supply of primary care physicians and physicians in most specialties is sufficient to ensure this result will hold.”
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.