Dive Brief:
- A report released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation labeled 41% of healthcare networks nationwide as narrow, defined as covering 25% or fewer physicians in a given area.
- According to the researchers, Florida (79%), Georgia (83%), and Oklahoma (78%) had a higher percentage of small provider networks than California.
- Twelve states were found to not have any narrow health plan options.
Dive Insight:
The researchers state in their report that these findings have health IT implications and health plan taxonomy.
“These findings demonstrate the utility of the new database in measuring the size of networks within geographic areas that matter most to consumers and regulators,” the researchers wrote. “These data can also be used to build an integrated Find a Doctor’ database that far surpasses the utility of existing online plan directories.”
The authors suggest that new federal and state regulations will lead to networks being more user-friendly and improve the implementation of narrow networks “as a strategy for offering lower-cost plans on the marketplaces.”