Ark. surgeon general says state needs more doctors to handle influx from federal health law

Ark. surgeon general says state needs more doctors

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas’ surgeon general told lawmakers Wednesday that he’s worried the state won’t have enough medical providers to care for the thousands of newly insured covered under the federal health care overhaul.

Dr. Joe Thompson told a legislative panel that between 80 and 90 percent of the state’s 500,000 uninsured will become covered under the health care law. Thompson said most of those will come from an expansion of the Medicaid program.

That growth will exacerbate the state’s shortage of doctors, particularly in rural areas, Thompson said.

“It’s going to put pressure on our provider community to better organize and be able to serve those individuals,” Thompson told the House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee. “We’re going to have to better organize our system so we have access and availability. Otherwise, we’ll have financial coverage but no accessibility.”

Thompson said the health care overhaul gives the state an opportunity to address the shortage of doctors in rural areas, a problem he said has existed for years.

“Rural Arkansas clearly has an undersupply of providers, and central Arkansas has been the repository for a lot of our specialized care,” Thompson told reporters. “We have specialists today that are driving out to do rural clinics, but the financial incentives are not there to give them the benefit and the reward for actually serving these rural areas.”

Thompson did not offer specific proposals for lawmakers to consider to address the shortage. He appeared before the panel to brief lawmakers on the effects of the health care overhaul.

Thompson said there are two other areas lawmakers need to address regarding the health care law when they return for the session in January. One is setting up rules for an electronic state health information exchange that will allow doctors to share information about patients. The other will be rules for the state’s insurance commissioner to enforce parts of the health care law.

Thompson also said it’s important for the state to get the most value out of the Medicaid expansion in the early years of the overhaul. The federal government will pay for the Medicare expansion from 2014 until 2017. The eventual additional cost to the state will be $200 million annually, he said.

“We need to make sure that in the early phases of this reform effort, when the feds are paying all of it, that we get as many of those unmet needs met as possible,” Thompson said.

Rep. Gregg Reep, the panel’s chairman, said he wanted Thompson to brief lawmakers on the overhaul as they prepare for next year’s session. Republican leaders in the Legislature have criticized the overhaul and Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe for not challenging it in court.

Reep, who is term-limited and will not be in the Legislature next year, said he believes the attention will shift among lawmakers from debating the overhaul to how to implement it.

“I think the General Assembly next year will work on from the governor’s perspective, which is let’s make this thing work for Arkansas,” Reep said. “If something gets changed on the federal level, we’ll deal with that, whatever it is.”