Open AccessMusculoskeletal Urgent Care Centers Restrict Access for Patients with Medicaid Insurance Based on Policy and Location
Author(s) -
Laurie Yousman,
Walter Hsiang,
Grace Jin,
Michael Najem,
Alison Mosier-Mills,
Akshay Khunte,
Siddharth Jain,
Howard P. Forman,
Daniel H. Wiznia
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
clinical orthopaedics and related research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.178
H-Index - 204
eISSN - 1528-1132
pISSN - 0009-921X
DOI - 10.1097/corr.0000000000001825
Subject(s) - medicaid , medicine , waiver , family medicine , phone , medical emergency , health care , linguistics , philosophy , political science , law , economics , economic growth
As the urgent care landscape evolves, specialized musculoskeletal urgent care centers (MUCCs) are becoming more prevalent. MUCCs have been offered as a convenient, cost-effective option for timely acute orthopaedic care. However, a recent "secret-shopper" study on patient access to MUCCs in Connecticut demonstrated that patients with Medicaid had limited access to these orthopaedic-specific urgent care centers. To investigate how generalizable these regional findings are to the United States, we conducted a nationwide secret-shopper study of MUCCs to identify determinants of patient access.