Documentation of Contraception and Pregnancy Intention In Medicaid Managed Care

Clinical guidelines recommend the documentation of pregnancy intention and family planning needs during primary care visits. Prior to the 2014 Medicaid expansion and release of these guidelines, the documentation practices of Medicaid managed care providers are unknown.

We performed a chart review of 1054 Medicaid managed care visits of women aged 13 to 49 to explore client, provider, and visit characteristics associated with documentation of immediate or future plans for having children and contraceptive method use. Five managed care plans used Current Procedural Terminology and International Classificationof Diseases, Ninth Revision codes to identify providers with at least 15 women who had received family planning or well-woman care in 2013. We conducted multilevel logistic regression analyses with documentation of contraceptive method and pregnancy intention as outcome variables and clinic site as the level 2 random effect.

Only 12% of charts had documentation of pregnancy intention and 59% documented contraceptive use. Compared to women with a family planning visit reason, women with an annual, reproductive health, or primary care reason for their visit were significantly less likely to have contraception documented (odds ratio [OR] = 11.0; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 6.8-17.7). Age was also a significant predictor with women aged 30 to 49 (OR = 0.6; 95% CI = 0.4-0.9), and women aged 13 to 19 (OR = 0.2; 95% CI = 0.1-0.6) being less likely to have a note about pregnancy intention in their chart. Pregnancy intention was more likely to be documented in multispecialty clinics (OR = 15.5; 95% CI = 2.7-89.2).

Interventions to improve routine medical record documentation of contraception and pregnancy intention regardless of patient age and visit characteristics are needed to facilitate the provision of family planning in managed care visits and, ultimately, achieving better maternal infant health outcomes and reduced costs.