Five years in, Obamacare hasn't created a crisis in primary care, according to a
new report from a healthcare technology company.
Even while 10 million Americans gained insurance coverage last year through the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, the proportion of new patients visiting primary care providers only rose slightly, to 22.9 percent in 2014 from 22.6 percent in 2013, the report said.
And the new patients were no sicker than the patients those doctors saw in years past, said Josh Gray, vice president of research at athenahealth Inc., a Watertown company that provides electronic health records and other software to doctors nationwide.
"There were actually a lot of people concerned that when people got insurance, some of them would have pent-up demand for untreated health problems, and that the demand would overwhelm doctors," Gray said. "We really haven't seen that. The flood of new patients never really materialized."
It's a trickle more than a flood and why that is isn't entirely clear. One explanation is that a population that's used to getting care from emergency rooms, community health clinics, or urgent care are still getting care that way. Going through the process of finding a primary or family doctor, figuring out who is in your insurance network, etc. is a hassle for anyone and might be a hurdle for the
16.4 million people new to health insurance.
It's still a little too early to know what effect the law is having on emergency room visits, with some reports suggesting they've decreased, while others show an increase, but what we do know is that emergency providers are saving a lot of money by not having to provide as much uncompensated care—people are showing up with insurance to pay for their visit. That's particularly true for states that took Medicaid expansion.
While we should be seeing new patient numbers going up for primary care providers, and channeling people from emergency rooms to having regular family doctors is the ultimate goal, this does mean one potential major problem with the law isn't happening. Getting in to see your family doctor isn't impossible because of all the new patients.