AHRQ Study Identifies Barriers to Specialty Care for Community Health Center Patients

Community Health Centers (CHCs) often have difficulty referring patients to specialists even after developing strategies to improve such access, according to a new AHRQ study. CHCs are health centers that typically treat a large number of patients who are low-income, insured through Medicaid, uninsured or underinsured, often in rural or inner-city areas. In the study, published in the American Journal of Managed Care, researchers surveyed medical directors of 199 CHCs in nine states and the District of Columbia about access to specialty care for their patients. They found that nearly 70 percent of CHC medical directors reported the barrier of few specialists in Medicaid managed care organizations’ networks accepting new patients; 49 percent reported that managed care administrative requirements for specialty referrals also presented a barrier. The research was performed under AHRQ’s Comparative Health System Performance Initiative, which funds studies about how health care delivery systems promote evidence-based practices and patient-centered outcomes research in delivering care. Access the abstract.