Study: Nearly A Third Of Doctors Won’t See New Medicaid Patients

This story was produced in collaboration with The Philadelphia Inquirer. Physician’s assistant Ann Valdez checks out Amy Morales, 2, during a check-up at a community health center in Aurora, Colorado. The clinic serves many Medicaid patients (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images).

If you’re on Medicaid and looking for a new doctor, your chances are excellent of finding one … in Wyoming.

In New Jersey, not so much.

About 69 percent of doctors nationally accept new Medicaid patients, but the rate varies widely across the country, according to a study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs.

New Jersey had the nation’s lowest rate at 40 percent, while Wyoming had the highest, at 99 percent, according to a survey last year of doctors by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For years, some states have struggled to attract doctors to treat patients enrolled in the state-federal health insurance program for the poor, largely because of their low pay. New Jersey’s reimbursement rate for Medicaid doctors, compared to what Medicare pays, is the lowest in the nation, according to the study.

Percentage of U.S. Office-­Based Physicians Accepting New Medicaid Patients, 2011

States estimated to be statistically significantly different from the national average are displayed in bold.

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