Association of State Access Standards With Accessibility to Specialists for Medicaid Managed Care Enrollees

Medicaid recipients have consistently reported less timely access to specialists than patients with other types of coverage. By 2018, state Medicaid agencies will be required by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to enact time and distance standards for managed care organizations to ensure an adequate supply of specialist physicians for enrollees; however, there have been no published studies of whether these policies have significant effects on access to specialty care.

To compare ratings of access to specialists for adult Medicaid and commercial enrollees before and after the implementation of specialty access standards.

We used Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey data to conduct a quasiexperimental difference-in-differences (DID) analysis of 20 163 nonelderly adult Medicaid managed care (MMC) enrollees and 54 465 commercially insured enrollees in 5 states adopting access standards, and 37 290 MMC enrollees in 5 matched states that previously adopted access standards.

Reported access to specialty care in the previous 6 months.

Seven thousand six hundred ninety-eight (69%) Medicaid enrollees and 28 423 (75%) commercial enrollees reported that it was always or usually easy to get an appointment with a specialist before the policy implementation (or at baseline) compared with 11 889 (67%) of Medicaid enrollees in states that had previously implemented access standards. Overall, there was no significant improvement in timely access to specialty services for MMC enrollees in the period following implementation of standard(s) (adjusted difference-in-differences, -1.2 percentage points; 95% CI, -2.7 to 0.1), nor was there any impact of access standards on insurance-based disparities in access (0.6 percentage points; 95% CI, -4.3 to 5.4). There was heterogeneity across states, with 1 state that implemented both time and distance standards demonstrating significant improvements in access and reductions in disparities.

Specialty access standards did not lead to widespread improvements in access to specialist physicians. Meaningful improvements in access to specialty care for Medicaid recipients may require additional interventions.