Search

Retail clinics are an increasingly popular new model of ambulatory care. To understand why patients seek care at these clinics and what their experiences were like, the authors interviewed 61 patients at 6 retail clinics. Patients were satisfied with the overall experience and were attracted to retail clinics because of their convenient locations and fixed, transparent pricing. Patients who had a primary care physician (PCP) sought care at these clinics primarily because their PCPs were not available in a timely manner. If retail clinics had not been available, a quarter of patients report they would have gone to the emergency department. Retail clinics appear to be responding to the need for convenient, affordable, and consumer-centered care.

Each year, more than 10 million Medicare beneficiaries are discharged from acute care hospitals into postacute care (PAC) settings, including inpatient rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and homes with services from home health agencies. These beneficiaries include very frail and vulnerable elders, many of whom have suffered from an acute event such as a stroke or a fall resulting in hip fracture, all of whom are judged unable to return to their homes without further care. Whether beneficiaries receive PAC and the type and intensity of care they receive is influenced not only by clinical factors, but by nonclinical factors including provider supply and financing, especially Medicare's methods of payment. This article provides a definition of PAC and discusses the wide cross-sectional variation in the use of postacute rehabilitation. It then discusses recent changes to PAC provider payment that have raised concerns about access to postacute rehabilitation, trends in the use of PAC, and what these trends imply about the appropriateness of PAC as it is now delivered. It concludes by identifying issues about the policy and research implications of recent developments and the PAC literature reviewed.

Objective: To examine whether and how different kinds of access to care (financial, potential, and realized) predict parent-report child primary care experiences in an urban community sample., Data Sources/study Setting: A prospective cohort study was performed. Baseline survey data were collected (67 percent response rate) from 3,406 parents of kindergarten through sixth grade students in a large urban school district in California during the 1999-2000 school year. A 1-year survey (80.4 percent response rate) resulted in a final sample of 2,738., Study Design: Data were analyzed using multiple regression models with robust estimation. The dependent variable was Time 2 parent reports of primary care experiences, assessed via the Parents' Perceptions of Primary Care (P3C) measure. The independent variables were financial access (insurance status), potential access (presence of a regular source of care), and realized access (foregone care), controlling for child and family characteristics (race/ethnicity, parent's language, mother's education level, and child chronic health condition status) and baseline P3C scores., Data Collection: Data were collected by mail, telephone, and in person in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Tagalog., Principal Findings: Controlling for baseline P3C scores and child and family characteristics, having no health insurance at both baseline and Time 2 was associated with a 6.2-point lower Time 2 P3C score, relative to having had health insurance at both time points. Having a regular provider at Time 2 (either always having had one or gaining one during the year) was associated with, on average, a 10-point higher Time 2 P3C score, compared to children without a regular provider (either never having had one or losing one during the year). Episodes of foregone care during the year were associated with 10.7 points lower Time 2 P3C scores, relative to children whose parents did not report foregone care. Similar relationships were found between all three measures of access to care and each of the sub-domain measures of primary care experience., Conclusions: Financial, potential, and realized access to care are associated prospectively with the full range of primary care experiences--comprehensiveness, communication, coordination, and contextual knowledge--beyond continuity and accessibility. Access to a regular source of care and to needed care are each associated with larger effects on primary care experiences than is the presence of health insurance. Gaining insurance or a regular source of care results in primary care experiences similar to always having had these, while losing a regular source of care has a more immediate effect than losing insurance on primary care experiences.

Objective: To describe the development and validation of the Barriers to Care Questionnaire (BCQ)., Methods: The 39-item BCQ was developed through review of the literature, focus groups, and cognitive interviews of Spanish- and English-speaking parents of children with chronic health conditions. Barriers to care are conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of pragmatics, health knowledge and beliefs, expectations about care, skills, and marginalization. The BCQ was field tested in 3 samples of children with special health care needs (CSHCN)., Results: Response rate for the field test was 77.2%. There were minimal missing data (0.08%), no floor effects, and minimal ceiling effects (3.8%, total scale). Internal consistency reliability (alpha) for the BCQ total scale was.95 and subscale alpha ranged from.75 to.91. The BCQ total scale and subscales correlated in the expected direction with validated measures of primary care characteristics and health-related quality of life. BCQ scores were higher (fewer barriers) for children with a primary care physician and for those who reported no problems getting care or foregone care., Conclusion: The BCQ is a feasible, reliable, and valid instrument for measuring barriers to care for CSHCN. Its use may inform efforts to support consumer choice, enhance provider accountability, and spur quality improvement.