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KFF designs, conducts and analyzes original public opinion and survey research on Americans’ attitudes, knowledge, and experiences with the health care system to help amplify the public’s voice in major national debates.
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This policy watch discusses the implications for the U.S. health care workforce of the recent DOS immigrant visa pause for individuals from 75 countries deemed more likely to be a public charge.
Based on a survey of primary care clinicians in early 2015, this Visualizing Health Policy infographic examines the experiences and attitudes of primary care practitioners (PCPs) after the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) major coverage provisions took effect in January 2014. Although most report no change in their ability to provide quality care, their opinions about the health care law are sharply divided along political party lines. Generally, primary care physicians have a more negative view…
This brief examines the supply of OB-GYNs in the U.S. and the share of OB-GYNs participating in the provider networks of Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) offered in the individual market in the federal and state Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplaces in 2021.
This issue brief analyzes the role that immigrants play in the hospital workforce, overall and by occupation and state. Immigrants account for about one in six hospital workers, including among clinical and nonclinical workers.
As policymakers and regulators pay more attention to consolidation in health care provider markets, this brief examines and summarizes the evidence about consolidation, including recent trends, the impact on prices and quality, and proposals to address consolidation and increase competition.
What does AI mean for patients in bed and doctors at the bedside? Host Chip Kahn and guest Dr. Robert Wachter, Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, discuss whether AI will produce a different kind of doctor in the future — a “clinician curator rather than a clinician-diagnostician.” The answer could define the future of medicine and the doctor-patient relationship.
How is AI applied to clinical care and hospital operations across a real health system at full scale? Chip Kahn talks to Dr. Michael Schlosser, Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at HCA Healthcare, about how AI is developed for everyday use, starting with careful testing and customization, with clinicians and nurses engaged from the very beginning as end users.
This issue brief attempts to assess how primary care physicians will respond to the entry of 32 million newly insured people into the health care system under health reform. The increase in the number of people with health coverage is expected to intensify competition among patients and payers for primary care resources. The brief analyzes data from a nationally representative survey of physicians to assess which adult-care primary care physicians are most likely to respond…
Despite occasional anecdotal reports of people having trouble finding a doctor who takes their insurance, KFF researchers find in a new analysis that the vast majority of non-pediatric office-based physicians accept new Medicare patients, as well as new private insurance patients. Eighty-nine percent of such physicians accepted new Medicare patients in 2019, and 91 percent accepted new private insurance patients, according to the analysis, which uses data from the federal 2019 National Electronic Health Records…
As both federal and state governments gear up to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), concerns about the supply and distribution of physicians, particularly primary care physicians, are being raised. In many areas of the country, there is a shortage of primary care physicians, and some worry about whether the current workforce can meet the growing demand for services that will likely accompany coverage expansions. To inform provider workforce issues related to…
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