Hu and coauthors dive into these plans, and explore the association between quantitative federally mandated network standards and access to specialty care among a sample of Medicaid-enrolled children, including children with special health care needs (CSHCN).
Ultimately, the researchers find "no evidence that adopting any new quantitative standards was associated with improvements in any use of specialty care or reducing unmet health care needs."
These results
suggest that network adequacy standards may have inadvertently increased frustration among caregivers while accessing care for CSHCN.
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