News

Increase in Poor Patients Has Torn the Safety Net


 

WASHINGTON — Community health centers, public hospitals, and other safety net providers are seeing a steadily growing number of low-income patients, while specialty care for these patients is becoming scarce, according to the results of a biennial national survey conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change.

“The saga continues with rising demands and expectations on safety net providers. They have, lucky them, solidified their lock on the uninsured market in most of our communities,” Robert Hurley, Ph.D., of the department of health administration at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, said at a conference sponsored by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC).

For example, despite strong growth in the capacity of community health centers across the country, many still are overwhelmed not only by uninsured patients and immigrants but also, increasingly, insured patients.

“[The number of] private insurance patients [is] growing at twice the rate of the general population growth in health centers,” said Daniel Hawkins, senior vice president at the National Association of Community Health Centers.

Health centers have absorbed a 60% increase in patients since 2001 and are now seeing 16 million patients a year.

“The privately insured patient population is over 2.1 million out of those 16 million. It's literally one of every six health center patients,” he said.

High-deductible and cost-sharing policies are a big part of that, but so is paltry coverage, Mr. Hawkins said.

Community health centers are also struggling to meet the demand for specialty care, which has grown scarce for low-income patients in the 12 communities surveyed by HSC.

In some communities specialty care would not be available if not for the employed positions in safety net hospitals and the faculty positions in the academic health centers, Dr. Hurley said at a conference to release the findings of the most recent center survey.

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