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Access to Health Care Services for Persons with Disabilities: Defining the Barriers to Successful Strategies for Change

This project was funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research to examine the environmental access barriers to the continuum of health care services for individuals with disabilities across the lifespan in Massachusetts. For the purposes of this research, we used 4 broad categories of functional limitations as a framework for examining environmental barriers: mobility, communication, cognitive and medical.

The study targeted both consumers with disabilities and health care providers offering services to consumers.

The research tested the following three hypotheses:

  1. There are differences among provider types along the health care continuum regarding physical accessibility for people with disabilities;
  2. All health care providers are more aware of and more likely to have addressed physical accessibility than cognitive, communication or medical accessibility;
  3. There are differences between providers and consumers in their perceptions of access barriers.

Methods/Activities

  1. We conducted consumer focus groups about access to health care to provide input into the provider survey and to deepen our understanding of barriers to health care.
  2. We surveyed people with disabilities about their access to health care in both English and Spanish.
  3. We surveyed providers of primary, acute and long-term care services in medicine, dental, substance abuse, and mental health about access to health care.
  4. We developed recommendations about improving access to health services forpeople with disabilities, and a future basic and applied research agenda.
  5. We worked closely with an Advisory Group of consumers, providers and other individuals involved in planning for the delivery of health care services for people with disabilities.

Focus Group Results

Publications

Bachman, S., Vedrani, M., Drainoni, M., Tobias, C., & Andrew, J. (2007). Variations in provider capacity to offer accessible health care for people with disabilities. Journal of Social Work in Disability and Rehabilitation. 6(3): 47-64.

Bachman, S., Vedrani, M., Drainoni, M., Tobias, C., & Maisels, L. (2006). Provider capacity to offer accessible health care for people with disabilities. Journal of Disability Policy Studies.17(3): 130-136.

Drainoni M, Lee-Hood, E, Tobias C, Bachman S, Andrew J, Maisels M. (2006) Cross-disability experiences of barriers to health-care access: Consumer perspectives. Journal of Disability Policy Studies. 17(2): 101-115.