A lack of access to contraception services is growing in the US, with many women living in areas without a full range of birth control options. Primary care physicians (PCPs), despite relatively low prescribing rates, are positioned to help fill this gap due to their large numbers and wide geographic distribution. Expanding contraceptive services in primary care could involve universal screening, addressing insurance barriers, and educating both patients and physicians about the availability of these services.
Women seeking contraception are facing a growing lack of access to services in light of legislative and clinical workforce changes. Primary care is widely seen as a critical sector in filling those access gaps.aged 13-44 years in the United States live in “contraceptive deserts” or places that lack access to a full range of birth control methods. About 1.2 million of those women live in counties that don’t have a single health center that has complete birth control services.
Angeline Ti, MD, an FP who teaches in a residency program at Wellstar Douglasville Medical Center in Douglasville, Georgia, toldthat the awareness issue might be the easiest change for PCPs as many patients aren’t aware you can get contraceptive services in primary care.
It’s important, she said, not to frame the gaps in contraceptive care as a failure on the part of individual clinicians but rather as: “How can we change some of the system-level factors that have gotten us to this point?” She said the thinking is that while OB/GYNs focus on women, FPs cover all ages and family members, so having the equipment and the storage space is best left to the OB/GYNs. She said that thinking may be short sighted.
FPs also have the advantage of being more widely distributed in rural and remote areas than OB/GYNs, she noted. “They are in almost every county in the United States.”
Contraception Primary Care Access To Healthcare OBGYN Family Physician Insurance Barriers
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