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Access
to Health Care Services for Persons with Disabilities: Defining
the Barriers to Successful Strategies for Change
This project
is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation
Research, and seeks to examine barriers to the continuum of health
care services for individuals with disabilities across the lifespan
in Massachusetts. For the purposes of this research, we use four
broad categories of functional limitations as a framework for examining
environmental barriers: mobility, communication, cognitive and medical.
The study targets
both consumers with disabilities and health care providers offering
services to these consumers.
The research tests
the following three hypotheses:
- There are
differences among provider types along the health care continuum
regarding physical accessibility for people with disabilities
- All health
care providers are more aware of and more likely to have addressed
physical accessibility than cognitive, communication or medical
accessibility
- There are
differences between providers and consumers in their perceptions
of access barriers
To test these
hypotheses, we have undertaken 6 major tasks:
- Conducting
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.
- Surveying
people with disabilities about their access to health care.
- Surveying
providers of primary, acute and long-term care services in medicine,
dental, substance abuse, and mental health about access to health
care.
- Visiting
providers whose survey responses indicate that they demonstrate
best practices with respect to access to health services for people
with disabilities and develop case studies about their activities.
- Developing
recommendations about improving access to health services for
people with disabilities, and a future basic and applied research
agenda.
- Working
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.
We will also
develop dissemination projects that will advance knowledge and practice
among purchasers, regulators, health plans, health care providers,
and individuals with disabilities. This project will also allow
us to develop a research agenda for future activities in this area.
At present,
the first and second activities have been completed. The consumer
survey has been administered to over 1100 individuals with a wide
range of disabilities, in both English and Spanish, to consumers
with disabilities. These results are currently being entered into
an SPSS database for analysis. The third task, surveying providers
of services, is currently underway. The surveys were disseminated
in February 2001 and are scheduled for entry into a database for
analysis in May 2001.
A third committee
meeting is currently being planned to present preliminary findings
from the consumer and provider surveys.
Key staff for
this project:
- Mari-Lynn
Drainoni, PhD, Principal Investigator
- Carol
Tobias, MMHS, Co-Investigator
- Sara Bachman,
Ph.D. Boston University School of Social Work, Co-Investigator
- Jennifer
Andrew, MPH, Project Coordinator
- Jocelyn
McCree, MA, Program Manager
- Viviana
Abuchar, MSW, Program Manager
- Mark Vedrani,
BS, Research Assistant
- Bethlyn
Vergo, MSW, Research Assistant
- Spenser
Weppler, BA, Research Assistant
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