Background: Although the Affordable Care Act has been successful in expanding Medicaid to >17 million people, insurance alone may not translate into access to health care. Even among the insured, substantial barriers to accessing services inhibit health care utilization. Objectives: We examined the effect of selected barriers to health care access and the magnitude of those barriers on health care utilization. Research Design: Data come from a 2008 survey of adult enrollees in Minnesota’s public health care programs. We used multivariate logistic regression to estimate the effects of perceived patient, provider, and system-level barriers on past year delayed, foregone, and lack of preventive care. Subjects: A total of 2194 adults enrolled in Minnesota Health Care Programs who were mostly female (66%), high school graduates (76%), unemployed (62%), and living in metro areas (67%) were included in the analysis. Results: Reporting problems across all barriers increased the odds of delayed care from 2 times for provider-related barriers (OR=2.0; 95% CI, 1.2–3.3) to >6 times for access barriers (OR=6.2; 95% CI, 3.8–10.2) and foregone care from 2.6 times for family/work barriers (OR=2.6; 95% CI, 1.3–5.1) to >7 times for access barriers (OR=7.1; 95% CI, 3.9–13.1). Perceived discrimination was the only barrier consistently associated with all 3 utilization outcomes. Conclusions: Multiple types of barriers are associated with delayed and foregone care. System-level barriers and discrimination have the greatest effect on health care seeking behavior.

Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet

Background: Critical needs for treatment trials in gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) include assessing response to treatment, evaluating symptom severity, and translation of symptom questionnaires into multiple languages. We evaluated the previously validated Reflux Disease Questionnaire (RDQ) for internal consistency, reliability, responsiveness to change during treatment and the concordance between RDQ and specialty physician assessment of symptom severity, after translation into Swedish and Norwegian. Methods: Performance of the RDQ after translation into Swedish and Norwegian was evaluated in 439 patients with presumed GERD in a randomized, double-blind trial of active treatment with a proton pump inhibitor. Results: The responsiveness was excellent across three RDQ indicators. Mean change scores in patients on active treatment were large, also reflected in effect sizes that ranged from a low of 1.05 (dyspepsia) to a high of 2.05 (heartburn) and standardized response means 0.99 (dyspepsia) and 1.52 (heartburn). A good positive correlation between physician severity ratings and RDQ scale scores was seen. The internal consistency reliability using alpha coefficients of the scales, regardless of language, ranged from 0.67 to 0.89. Conclusion: The results provide strong evidence that the RDQ is amenable to translation and represents a viable instrument for assessing response to treatment, and symptom severity.

There is evidence that the physician response rate is declining. In response to this, methods for increasing the physician response rate are currently being explored. This paper examines the response rate and extent of non-response bias in a mixed-mode study of Minnesota physicians. This mode experiment was embedded in a survey study on the factors that influence physicians’ willingness to disclose medical errors and adverse events to patients and their families. Physicians were randomly selected from a list of licensed physicians obtained from the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. Afterwards, they were randomly assigned to either a single-mode (mail-only or web-only) or mixed-mode (web-mail or mail-web) design. Differences in response rate and nonresponse bias were assessed using Fischer’s Exact Test. The overall response rate was 18.60%. There were no statistically significant differences in the response rate across modes (p – value = 0.410). The non-response analysis indicates that responders and non-responders did not differ with respect to speciality or practice location. The mode of administration did not affect the physician response rate.

We sought to evaluate the effect of pairing a mixed-mode mail and telephone methodology with a prepaid US 2.00 dollars cash incentive on response rates in a survey of Medicaid enrollees stratified by race and ethnicity. Sampling was conducted in 2 stages. The first stage consisted of a simple random sample (SRS) of Medicaid enrollees. In the second stage, American Indian, African American, Latino, Hmong, and Somali enrollees were randomly sampled. A total of 8412 enrollees were assigned randomly to receive a mail survey with no incentive or a US 2.00 dollars bill. The response rate within the SRS after the mail portion was 54% in the incentive group and 45% in the nonincentive group. Response rates increased considerably with telephone follow-ups. The incentive SRS response rate increased to 69%, and the nonincentive response rate increased to 64%. Differences between incentive conditions are more pronounced after the first mailing (P < 0.01); almost all differences remained significant (P < 0.05) after the completion of the mail mode. The inclusion of the US 2.00 dollars incentive had similar effects on response rates and cost across the different racial and ethnic strata, except for Latino enrollees. A mixed-mode mail and telephone methodology is effective for increasing response rates in a Medicaid population overall and within different racial and ethnic groupings. The effectiveness of this strategy can be enhanced, in terms of response rate and cost, by including a US 2.00 dollars prepaid incentive.