A recent study lays out some reasons why many physicians are so reluctant to see such patients.
It starts with low reimbursement rates. Medicaid pays about 61% of what Medicare pays, nationally, for outpatient physician services. The payment rate varies from state to state, of course. But if 61% is average, you can imagine how terrible the situation is in some locations. Physicians interviewed in the study explained that they felt it was their duty to see some amount of Medicaid patients in their practice. They recognized the moral need to provide care for this population. But they did not want to commit career suicide they did not want good deeds to bankrupt their clinical practices.
But reimbursement rates were not the only story. Many physicians talk about unacceptable waiting times to receive reimbursement from their state Medicaid programs. To make matters worse, these low reimbursements came on top of increasingly complex paperwork that their office staff are forced to fill out. Less money and a month late too. Not a recipe for happiness.
In addition to getting less money after a longer wait, most physicians were also reluctant to take on many Medicaid patients in their practices because these patients often required much more time and attention than the average patient. In their experience, many physicians felt that the social and behavioral needs of Medicaid patients required a disproportionate share of their time, and of their support staff.
