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 patients build stable, long-term relationships with their providers that are associated with several benefits, including:

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

A regular provider can help with care coordination and continuity, particularly for women, who often rely on at least two providers for routine care — a primary care provider and an obstetrician or gynecologist for reproductive care.

According to America’s Health Rankings analysis, the prevalence of having a dedicated health care provider is higher among:

• Women ages 35-44 compared with those ages 18-24.
• Non-Hispanic women of any race compared with Hispanic women.
• College graduates compared with those who have less than a high school education.
• Women with an annual household income of $75,000 or more compared with those who have incomes less than $25,000.

Additional research has found that populations of women more likely to report seeing a regular clinician for care, include: 

• Privately insured women compared with uninsured women. 
• Women living in states that have expanded Medicaid compared with those in states 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 services.
• 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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Friedberg, Mark W., Peter S. Hussey, and Eric C. Schneider. “Primary Care: A Critical Review Of The Evidence On Quality And Costs Of Health Care.” Health Affairs 29, no. 5 (May 1, 2010): 766–72. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2010.0025.

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/.

Winters, Paul, Daniel Tancredi, and Kevin Fiscella. “The Role of Usual Source of Care in Cholesterol Treatment.” Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine 23, no. 2 (March 1, 2010): 179–85.https://doi.org/10.3122/jabfm.2010.02.090084.