Half of Doctors Listed as Serving Medicaid Patients Are Unavailable, Investigation Finds

From the NY Times. Excerpts:

"Large numbers of doctors who are listed as serving Medicaid patients are not available to treat them, federal investigators said in a new report.

“Half of providers could not offer appointments to enrollees,” the investigators said in the report, which will be issued on Tuesday.

Many of the doctors were not accepting new Medicaid patients or could not be found at their last known addresses, according to the report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services."

"The health law is fueling rapid growth in Medicaid, with enrollment up by nine million people, or 16 percent, in the last year, the department said. Most of the new beneficiaries are enrolled in private health plans that use a network of doctors to manage their care."

"Patients select doctors from a list of providers affiliated with each Medicaid health plan. The investigators, led by the inspector general, Daniel R. Levinson, called doctors’ offices and found that in many cases the doctors were unavailable or unable to make appointments.

More than one-third of providers could not be found at the location listed by a Medicaid managed-care plan."

"the actual size of provider networks may be considerably smaller than what is presented by Medicaid managed-care plans."

"Among the providers who offered appointments, the median wait time was two weeks. (The number of providers above the median is the same as the number below it.)

“Over a quarter of providers had wait times of more than one month, and 10 percent had wait times longer than two months,” the report said."

"in Lake Charles,...It’s nearly impossible to find specialty care for Medicaid patients of any age with diabetes, asthma, sickle cell anemia and certain other chronic illnesses.”"