Insured minorties continue to face obstacles to heatlh care, UCSF study reports

Minorities, particularly Hispanics and Asian Americans, are more likely than
non-Hispanic whites to report obstacles in access to health care, according to
a University of California, San Francisco study. The study, which appears in
the July/August issue of the journal Health Affairs (a leading health policy
journal), compared access across racial/ethnic groups and documented cultural
barriers. The researchers are also among the first to examine the effects of
managed care on minority populations and compare access across insurance plans.

Analyzing data from the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey that included
responses from more than 22, 000 individuals and 9,000 families from around the
country, the researchers discovered that Hispanics more frequently reported
difficulty getting care, said Kathryn Phillips, lead author of the new study
and UCSF associate professor of health economics and health services research
in the School of Pharmacy and Institute for Health Policy Studies. Also, they
more frequently reported going without needed care and lacking the assurance
that family members could get necessary care. Nearly one-third of Hispanics in
the study reported a lack of usual source of care (either a clinic or
physician). In addition, they were twice as likely to report long waits for
care and that their provider failed to listen to them and provide them with
needed information.

Asian Americans in the study were most likely to report dissatisfaction with
the quality of care provided by their primary care physician.  They also
reported with more frequency that they would not go to their primary care
provider for new health problems, preventive health care, or referral. Contrary
to popular perceptions, this suggests that Asian Americans may experience less
continuity of care than other racial/ethnic groups, explained Phillips.

Reasons for the increased obstacles to care among Asian Americans remain
unclear, she added.  Though Asian American and non-Hispanic white families
often share similar sociodemographic profiles, previous studies have found
that Asian Americans are more likely to have lapses in health coverage and to
report high levels of family and community stress.

African Americans reported similar barriers to care when compared to
non-Hispanic whites, but with less frequency than Hispanics or Asian
Americans.  Non-Hispanic whites reported the poorest access to care on only one
measure, said the researchers: whether the provider asks about medications and
treatments prescribed by other doctors.
“These findings reinforce the fact that language, cultural, and economic
differences are barriers to health care,” said Phillips, who added that
minorities also have a more limited choice of insurance plans than whites.

The UCSF researchers also examined the effects of managed care on access to
health care and compared access across insurance plans. Non-managed care
enrollees were defined as those not enrolled in an HMO that requires them to
obtain care from specified HMO providers or clinics.

Managed care enrollees (across all ethnic/racial groups) do not necessarily
face more barriers to health care than non-managed care enrollees - just
different ones, said Phillips.  In fact, managed care enrollees experience few
financial barriers to care and report better continuity of care than
non-managed care enrollees, she said. However, they had more difficulty getting
appointments and contacting their providers by phone and expressed less
satisfaction with their care than their non-managed care counterparts.

These trends were similar when researchers compared managed care to non-managed
care enrollees within racial/ethnic groups. 

Phillips emphasized that expansion of insurance coverage will not ease many of
the access obstacles that both managed care and non-managed care enrollees
face. Although being uninsured is linked to worse access, the majority of
families in this national sample had insurance, she emphasized. “This
highlights the importance of other factors in determining access to care,” she
said. “Most people reporting hardship in accessing care are not poor. Clearly,
these access issues cut across racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups.”

Co-investigators on this study included, Michelle L. Mayer, PhD, RN, MPH,
clinical research associate with the Children’s Health Initiative at Lucile S.
Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford and Lu Ann Aday, PhD, professor of
behavioral sciences and of management and policy Sciences, school of Public
Health, University of Texas-Austin.