Personal Physician Access by Preferred Language Among Medicare Advantage and Medicare Fee-for-Service Older Adults

A personal physician is an ongoing medical advisor who assumes primary responsibility for a patient's care and is vital for promoting health and improving the patient's quality of care received. The continuity of care from having a personal physician fosters patient-provider relationships, resulting in better communication, trust, and satisfaction. It promotes access to preventive care, improves health outcomes, and lowers healthcare costs. Using 2012 Medicare Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (MCAHPS) survey data, Martsolf and colleagues found that Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees were more likely to report having a personal physician than those in Medicare Fee-for-Service (FFS). That study also revealed that Spanish language survey respondents were less likely than other sociodemographic groups to have a personal physician. However, the analysis did not include Puerto Rico (PR) residents, a major Spanish-speaking group living in a US jurisdiction. Participation in MA, particularly among Hispanic and Black individuals with Medicare, has grown rapidly in the past decade. It is unknown whether this increased MA enrollment has affected access to a personal physician for groups who were less likely to have one a decade ago. We therefore used data from the 2022 MCAHPS survey to update our understanding of patterns in having a personal physician among Medicare enrollees. Furthermore, we evaluated whether MA enrollment among Spanish-responding older adults, including those in PR, is associated with greater likelihood of having a personal physician than FFS.