Secret survey to gauge doctor access
Government plan will have callers posing as patients
By Robert Pear
New York Times / June 27, 2011
WASHINGTON — Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers’’ to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices, and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.
The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem’’: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.
Federal officials expect more than 30 million Americans to gain coverage under the health care law passed last year. “These newly insured Americans will need to seek out new primary care physicians, further exacerbating the already growing problem of PCP shortages in the United States,’’ the Department of Health and Human Services said in a description of the project that it submitted to the White House.
Access to care has been a concern in Massachusetts, which provides coverage under a state program cited by many in Congress as a model for President Obama’s health care overhaul.
In a recent study, the Massachusetts Medical Society found that 53 percent of family physicians and 51 percent of internal medicine physicians were not accepting new patients. When new patients could get appointments, they faced long waits, averaging 36 days to see family doctors and 48 days for internists.
In the mystery shopper survey, administration officials said, a federal contractor will call the offices of 4,185 doctors — 465 in each of nine states: Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. The doctors will include pediatricians and obstetrician-gynecologists.
According to government documents obtained from Obama administration officials, the mystery shoppers will call medical practices and ask if doctors are accepting new patients and, if so, how long the wait would be.
The government is eager to know whether doctors’ offices give different answers to callers depending on whether they have public insurance, like Medicaid, or private insurance, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
The calls are to begin in a few months, with preliminary results from the survey expected next spring. Each office will be called at least twice — by a person who supposedly has private insurance and by someone who supposedly has public insurance.
Plans for the survey have riled many doctors because the secret shoppers will not identify themselves as working for the government.
“I don’t like the idea of the government snooping,’’ said Dr. Raymond Scalettar, an internist in Washington. “It’s a pernicious practice — Big Brother tactics, which should be opposed.’’
Dr. Robert L. Hogue, a family physician in Brownwood, Texas, asked: “Is this a good use of tax money? Probably not. Everybody with a brain knows we do not have enough doctors.’’
In response to the drumbeat of criticism, a federal health official said doctors did not need to worry because the data would be kept confidential. “Reports will present aggregate data, and individuals will not be identified,’’ said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the plan before its final approval by the White House.
Administration officials said the survey would yield an enormous benefit to the government while imposing an extremely limited burden on doctors.
The new health care law includes several provisions intended to increase the supply of primary care doctors, and officials want to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of those policies.
Federal officials said the initial survey would cost $347,370. Hogue said the money could be better spent on the training or reimbursement of primary care doctors.
Most doctors accept Medicare patients, who are 65 and older or disabled. But in many parts of the country, Medicaid, the program for low-income people, pays so little that some doctors refuse to accept Medicaid patients. This could become a more serious problem in 2014, when the new health law will greatly expand eligibility for Medicaid.
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.
“
