Original ArticleOrthopedic Surgeons are Less Likely to See Children Now for Fracture Care Compared with 10 Years Ago
Section snippets
Methods
This study was approved by the institutional review board of the Keck School of Medicine/Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Fifty orthopedic surgeons’ practices were randomly selected by using a random number generator from the 136 orthopedic surgeons listed in the Los Angeles Medical Society Directory (2009 edition), the same database used in the 2001 published study. Physicians at tertiary pediatric centers were excluded from the study to assess access at the community level for a pediatric
Results
Of the 50 practices contacted, 5 did not return a minimum of 3 phone calls. Of the 45 practices successfully contacted, the privately insured patient was offered an appointment within 7 days (range, 0-7 days; mean, 1.94 days) by 42% (19/45) and between 8 and 20 days by 7% (3/45). Of the 45 practices successfully contacted, only one gave an appointment when the fictitious child was said to be insured through Medi-Cal (1/45, 2%). The appointment was offered 4 days from the time of the call.
Discussion
It is not surprising that there has been no improvement in access to timely orthopedic care for children with Medi-Cal insurance because there has not been a significant change in the past decade in reimbursement to physicians caring for this population. As stated approximately 10 years ago, “common sense dictates that if an office loses money on each visit of a patient with Medi-Cal, an office must necessarily limit the number of Medi-Cal patients it sees or face bankruptcy.”1 Both in this
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Cited by (0)
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.