Increased Medicaid payments increases appointment availability

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Increasing Medicaid reimbursements to Medicare levels for primary care in turn raised Medicaid payments in both 2013 and 2014, according to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The authors found that primary care appointment availability increased by 7.7 percentage points during that time, from 58.7 percent to 66.4 percent. States with the largest increases in reimbursements experienced the largest increases in availability. Additionally, wait time for new Medicaid patients remained stable. Study