A new study finds that Americans' access to medical care has deteriorated between 2003 and 2007. In 2007 one in five people reported not getting or delaying needed medical care in the previous 12 months. The numbers are up by 14 percent when one in seven reported the same in 2003.
The survey findings are based on HSC's 2007 Health Tracking Household Survey, a nationally representative survey containing information on 18,000 people.
HSC is a nonpartisan health policy research organization funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the survey and the study.
HSC has conducted the survey five times since 1997 as part of the Community Tracking Study, and the 2007 survey shows the sharpest increase in access problems in a decade, particularly among insured Americans.
According to the study the proportion of Americans reporting an unmet medical need between 2003 and 2007 increased by 2.8 percentage points to 8 percent - the equivalent of about 9.5 million more people going without medical care. During the same period, the proportion of Americans delaying needed care increased by 3.9 percentage points to 12.3 percent, or about 13.5 million more people postponing care.
In 2007, more than 23 million people reported going without needed care and approximately 36 million people delayed care, for a total of about 59 million people reporting access problems.
"The findings send a clear message that we are heading down the wrong path. The American health care system is broken, and with each passing year more Americans are falling behind when it comes to getting the medical care they need," said David C. Colby, PhD, vice president for research and evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "This is a national problem that demands national attention."
Cost was cited as an obstacle in receiving access to needed care, along with rising rates of health plan and health system barriers.
Access problems increased more for people in poor or fair health than for healthier people. Low-income children encountered the greatest increase in unmet needs among all children, reversing the gains they experienced between 1997 and 2003. As a consequence, income differences in unmet need for children were eliminated by 2003, but these disparities returned by 2007, the report found.
Uninsured people continued to face far greater access problems and were almost three times as likely to report going without care as insured people - 17.5 percent versus 6.3 percent.
However, insured people experienced a greater percentage increase in unmet medical needs compared with uninsured people - a 62 percent increase for the insured versus a 33 percent increase for the uninsured. As a result, ironically, the access gap between insured and uninsured people narrowed slightly. In 2003, uninsured people were 3.4 times as likely to report going without care as insured people and 2.8 times as likely in 2007.
"This is the most up-to-date snapshot of the access problems Americans are facing when seeking medical care, and it's not a pretty picture, especially for insured people, who increasingly are finding that the access to care once guaranteed by insurance is declining," said Peter J. Cunningham, an HSC senior fellow and coauthor of the study.
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E-mail Associate Editor Molly Merrill at molly.merrill@medtechpublishing.com