Medicare Advantage Networks Include Few Black Or Hispanic Physicians, Making Concordant Care Inaccessible For Many

Health Affairs January 1, 2025
David J. Meyers, Eunhae Grace Oh, Maricruz Rivera-Hernandez, Momotazur Rahman, Amal N. Trivedi

Abstract

Black and Hispanic patients who receive care from Black and Hispanic physicians have greater use of preventive care. However, receiving care from racially concordant physicians requires that such physicians are included in private insurance plan networks. Using data from 2019, we examined the extent to which racially concordant physicians are available in the Medicare Advantage (MA) program, which disproportionately enrolls Black and Hispanic Medicare beneficiaries, by linking MA physician networks to physician race and ethnicity to measure the diversity of in-network physicians. On average, 51.1...

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