During a study done 10 years ago, authors discovered that most practices wouldn’t see adolescent Medicaid patients with fractures, but they would schedule appointments with children who were covered under private insurance, according to a report in Reuters. The tide has now shifted, and many orthopedic surgeons are not seeing adolescent patients at all.
In the most recent study, a researcher contacted 45 orthopedic practices in Los Angeles and asked to make an appointment for a 10-year-old boy with a broken arm. Each office was called twice; one time the researcher said the boy was covered by a private insurer, the other time he was covered by Medicaid. There were 19 practices that would make an appointment with the child covered by a private insurance and one that would see the child covered by Medicaid. When the office wouldn’t see the Medicaid patient, only nine could refer the researcher to an orthopedic surgeon who would take Medicaid patients.
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