Dedicated Health Care Provider - Women in United States

United States

Individuals with a dedicated health care provider are better positioned to receive care that can prevent, detect and manage disease and other health conditions. Having a regular health care provider helps the patient and provider build a stable, long-term relationship that is associated with several benefits, including:

• Appropriate preventive care.
• Lower health care costs.
• Better overall health status.
• Fewer emergency room visits for non-urgent or avoidable problems.
• Improvements in chronic care management for asthma, hypertension and diabetes.

A regular provider can help with care coordination and continuity, particularly for women, who often rely on at least two providers for routine care: obstetricians or gynecologists for reproductive care and primary care providers for general health care.

Populations of women more likely to report seeing a regular clinician for care include: 

• Women ages 50-64 compared with women ages 18-49.
• White and Black women compared with Hispanic women. 
• Women with a household income at least 200% above the federal poverty level compared with women with a lower income. 
• Privately insured women compared with uninsured women. 
• Women living in states that have expanded Medicaid compared with those living in a state without Medicaid expansion.

Strategies to increase the number of women with a dedicated health care provider include:

• Reducing barriers to care such as lack of health insurance, high cost of care, lack of services due to geography or remote options (e.g., through telehealth) and lack of culturally competent care.
• Increasing primary care capacity by empowering other care providers, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants, to provide more care and increase the capacity of the primary care system.
• Reorienting health care systems to encourage patients to use primary care for new symptoms instead of seeking specialists with low-impact and high-cost procedures.

Increasing the proportion of people with a usual primary care provider is a Healthy People 2030 leading health indicator.

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Salganicoff, Alina, Usha Ranji, Adara Beamesderfer, and Nisha Kurani. “Women and Health Care in the Early Years of the Affordable Care Act: Key Findings from the 2013 Kaiser Women’s Health Survey.” Issue Brief. KFF, May 15, 2014. https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/report/women-and-health-care-in-the-early-years-of-the-aca-key-findings-from-the-2013-kaiser-womens-health-survey/.

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