Health Affairs March 5, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic and heightened emphasis on systemic racism brought needed attention to the deep history of inequitable access to health care in the United States. The causes are complex and intertwined. For millions of people, access to care—including the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of myriad serious diseases—is hampered by geographic availability of physicians and other health care providers, insurance status, costs of care, lack of culturally competent care team members, and other barriers. This leads to longer wait times and unnecessary treatment delays for patients, resulting in costlier care visits.
Fortunately, there are steps we can take at the state and federal levels to improve equitable access to specialty care. Looking through the lens of one such specialty—dermatology—a few...