While the ACA Medicaid expansion has increased overall access to surgical care, it has not increased complex surgical procedure use at high volume hospitals among low-income and minority patients, according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
Researchers compared surgery records from high volume hospitals in three states that opted-in to ACA's Medicaid expansion, Kentucky, Maryland and New Jersey, with comparable hospitals in North Carolina and Florida that did not expand their Medicaid program.
At 468 hospitals, researchers examined 166,558 adults between the ages of 18 and who underwent:
- Total hip replacement
- Total knee replacement
- Heart bypass surgery
- Pancreatic cancer surgery
Disparities in regionalized surgical procedure utilization at high volume hospitals among ethnic and racial minorities and low-income populations did not change after the ACA expansion.