Uninsured ED and Inpatient Visits Down Since ACA
Uninsured hospital admissions and emergency department visits are down since passage of the Affordable Care Act.
And Medicaid-covered admissions and ER visits are up, according to a new analysis.
The report, published on the JAMA Network Open, found that ER visits by uninsured patients fell from 16 percent to eight percent between 2006 and 2016, with most of this decline after 2014, while uninsured discharges fell from six percent to four percent.
The rate of uninsured ER visits declined, moreover, at a time when overall ER visits continued to rise.
While the Affordable Care Act is likely the cause of most of these changes, other contributing factors include the emergence of urgent care facilities, telemedicine, and free-standing ERs as well as new payment models and rules.
The study’s findings are especially good news for Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals because they care for so many more low-income patients than other hospitals and have benefited from the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of access to insurance, whether through Medicaid expansion or the private health insurance market.
Learn more in the JAMA Network Open article “US Emergency Department Visits and Hospital Discharges Among Uninsured Patients Before and After Implementation of the Affordable Care Act.”
Included in this edition are articles about:
According to Kaiser, for-profit companies that sub-contract with Medicaid managed care organizations to review requests for services often deny care to Medicaid patients to save money for the MCOs that employ them and to benefit themselves financially.
An early November bulletin from CMS, however, clarifies that this approach is still permissible, which is good news for Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals and SNAP members hoping to benefit from the state’s hospital assessment.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has vetoed a bill that included a requirement that certain Medicaid recipients either work or search for work.
Among the issues addressed in the letter are how the House-passed proposal would detract from the role of Medicaid in fighting the state’s opioid crisis; the proposed reduction in tax credits to help purchase health insurance; the challenge posed by a per capita approach to Medicaid financing; the potential loss of health care jobs; the likelihood of large numbers of Pennsylvanians losing their health insurance and state Medicaid costs rising significantly; and the erosion of consumer protections.