Family planning, managed care, and rural America

Within the United States, rural residents encounter a greater number of barriers in accessing health care services than their urban counterparts. In general, rural Americans have less access to both family planning services and managed care delivery systems. Given the rapid changes in health care, we reviewed the implications for the provision and integration of family planning and managed care services in rural areas, where there is limited experience in establishing working relationships between those services. In many instances, family planning services are well established in rural areas where managed care has not yet penetrated. Our case study in Minnesota suggests that, although managed care and family planning services are developing in rural areas, there is little evidence of collaboration. Several innovative and successful family planning projects do exist in rural areas, however, and serve as models of successful population-based programs that could work well with health plans. Although this study concentrated on the provision and utilization of subsidized family planning services, there is a compelling need for further work to determine accurately where rural residents are accessing such services and how the expansion of managed care will affect the delivery of reproductive health care.