Access to health care refers to the ease with which an individual can obtain needed medical services. RAND research has examined the social, cultural, economic, and geographic factors that influence health care access worldwide; the effects of changes in access; and the relationship between access and health for specific U.S. populations—including racial and ethnic minorities, people with limited English proficiency, the uninsured, the elderly, children, and veterans.
Journal Article
Only 42 percent of the 354 million annual visits in the U.S. for acute care—treatment for newly arising health problems—are made to patients' personal physicians. The rest are made to emergency departments (28 percent), specialists (20 percent), or outpatient departments (7 percent).
Journal Article
The nature of employer-sponsored coverage may change substantially after implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, with an increase in the number of workers offered coverage through the health insurance exchanges.
Multimedia
This web-based mapping tool from RAND can help health care decisionmakers in Missouri identify community-level hotspots where suboptimal health care exists, in particular when it is related to low health literacy.
Report
Retail clinics' quality of care appears comparable to that of other provider types, but we know little about the effects of clinic use on preventive services, care coordination, and care continuity.
Journal Article
Adolescents and parents reported that the most effective way to encourage preventive care utilization among teens was to directly address provider-level barriers related to the timeliness, privacy, confidentiality, comprehensiveness, and continuity of their preventive care.
Journal Article
This evaluation study found that the Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention Treatment Program provides access to high-quality care for insured women with breast cancer; however, many are treated at an advanced stage, which is associated with worse outcomes.
Report
Updates RAND's evaluation of the antismoking and health programs established by the state of Arkansas with its share of the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement funds.
Research Brief
Presents information on the growing phenomenon of retail medical clinics, the types of patients they serve and the types of care they provide, and whether some common claims about retail clinics are supported by evidence.
Past Event
Policy analyst Ateev Mehrotra discusses the cost, quality, and potential capacity of medical clinics in commercial settings at Health Care on Aisle 7: The Growing Phenomenon of Retail Clinics on March 19, 2010.
Report
Are patients willing to travel for healthcare? RAND Europe's report on patient choice.
Research Brief
Stakeholders in communities in which health care access was disrupted by Hurricane Katrina were engaged in an assessment of health priorities, as well as in data interpretation and plan design, to produce a sustainable community-academic partnership.
Research Brief
Presents findings from the Teen Depression Awareness Project, which explored how depression affects teens, the factors that influence teens' readiness to seek treatment for depression, and the barriers that teens and parents face when seeking care.
Report
This document explores how requiring individuals to obtain health insurance (an individual mandate) would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
Report
This document explores how requiring employers to offer health insurance (an employer mandate) would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
Report
This document explores how increased use of bundled payment approaches would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
Report
This document explores how expanding Medicaid/SCHIP eligibility would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
Report
This document explores how a refundable tax credit to offset the cost of health insurance premiums would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
Journal Article
This study found that patients were satisfied with the overall experience and were attracted to retail clinics because of their convenient locations and fixed, transparent pricing.
Journal Article
To better understand the potential for retail clinics, the authors describe the sociodemographic characteristics of the communities in which they operate.
Journal Article
This commentary suggests that rationing health care is inevitable and urges physicians to lead the way in developing a plan to do it reasonably and equitably.
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