Dive Brief:
- Most Medicare beneficiaries have excellent access to physician services, with 91% of office-based doctors accepting new Medicare patients, according to a study by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation.
- 96% of beneficiaries reported regular access to a doctor's office or clinic, and 90% said they could book prompt appointments for primary and specialty care.
- Just 2% of seniors reported having problems finding a new doctor within the past year.
Dive Insight:
Over the last several years, there's been the occasion gloom-and-doom report that physicians were going to flee the Medicare program en masse. Something must have been wrong with those studies, because it looks instead like physicians are sticking with Medicare and accepting new Medicare-insured patients almost without exception. I'd wager that virtually no other health plan has those kind of high acceptance rates. With all of politics around Medicare, it's good to see that, from at least one angle, it's clearly getting the job done.