Identifying Barriers to Physical Therapy Services for Medicaid Managed Care Enrollees: A Rapid Systematic Review

Ensuring access to various types of healthcare services continues to be a priority for public health professionals. Insurance type plays a critical role in determining access. Over half of Americans have private health insurance and approximately one-third have public health insurance. Medicaid is one type of public health insurance for low-income individuals, pregnant women, and children and covers approximately 25% of the population. This rapid review sought to understand whether disparities in access to outpatient physical therapy services exist based on insurance type. This study used a mix of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and keywords to search PubMed and Scopus databases. Articles meeting specific inclusion and exclusion were included. Four articles met these criteria and were included for final analysis. Three of the studies looked at access to outpatient physical therapy services by ability to obtain an appointment and wait time to first appointment. In all three studies, patients with private insurance were able to obtain an appointment more easily than those with Medicaid (