To assess the impacts of medical transportation services on utilization of the total number of health care services the child received during the past year and the total number of EPSDT services the child received during the past year, respondents were analyzed along the strata MTP users and MTP non-users. Indeed, utilization of MTP services does seem to impact the utilization of health care services (see Figure 10). Medicaid recipients that accessed the MTP program in the past year reported higher utilization (p<.05) of doctor and dentist visits during the last year than those that did not. Those that accessed MTP services reported having more than their additional health care visits than their peers who did not access MTP services. The difference in these two groups is striking, but some of the differences may be attributable a relatively small group of children that require frequent healthcare services. Medicaid provides health care for many children with chronic or extraordinary medical needs who require numerous trips to health care providers. For example, some patients with kidney problems requiring hemodialysis may need visit a dialysis center up to three time a week (125). This speculation cannot be confirmed, but even when dropping all respondents reporting their number of health care visits three standard deviations above the mean, the differences between the groups (p<.05) remain significant.
Author
State
TX
Line of Business or Market
Medicaid