State Health Care Leaders: Access Will Top Public Agenda |
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CONTACT: Michal Smith-Mello at the Center FRANKFORT, KY (January 22, 1998) — Access to care, Kentucky health care leaders conclude, will remain at the top of the health care agenda for the foreseeable future. Respondents to a leadership opinion survey conducted by the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center and the University of Kentucky's Center for Health Services Management and Research cited access to care as the most significant health policy issue the state will confront in the coming years. It will be further complicated, many conclude, by impending limitations to health care services for medically needy Kentuckians, who will be affected by welfare reform, Medicaid managed care, reductions in Medicare coverage, and other regulatory changes. When asked to identify the “single most important health policy issue” the state will confront, 53 percent of respondents cited access to care, raising questions about, among other things, care for the medically indigent, widely anticipated health cost increases, declining public resources, and the long-term consequences of limited access to health care. No other issue resonated as strongly with these opinion leaders. A distant second and third were responses about Kentucky’s aging population (10 percent of responses) and managed care (8 percent of responses). “While several national research projects suggest that health care costs are the major issue, here in Kentucky, with our high uninsured rate and fears about health insurance reform, access is the major issue,” said F. Douglas Scutchfield, Director of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Health Services Management and Research and Peter P. Bosomworth Professor of Health Services Research and Study. Health care opinion leaders also anticipate that access to care will figure prominently among the many issues their own organizations will confront. Each respondent was asked to identify three organizational issues on the survey. Only managed care, which is predicated on the notion that access can be broadened by controlling health care costs, figures more prominently in the issues these leaders believe their organizations will reckon with on the immediate horizon. Of total responses, 19 percent cited managed care as the issue most likely to confront health care organizations. It was followed by the related issues of access to care (13 percent) and health insurance reform (13 percent). These findings emerged from a joint effort by the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center and the University of Kentucky's Center for Health Services Management and Research to lend a future-oriented perspective to health care decisionmaking in the Commonwealth. For this Delphi study, which involves the collection and analysis of opinions from recognized leaders in a field, state health care leaders were identified and surveyed about the future of health and health policy issues in Kentucky. Specifically, 75 senior leaders in health care were asked to cite the three most significant health policy issues their organizations would face and the single most important issue the state would face over the next five to seven years. Fifty one responses were received. A larger study is planned for this summer, but an article detailing these findings, “State Health Care Leaders: Issue of Access Will Not Go Away,” is available by contacting the Center. |