Just 20% of Ky. adults say a health-care provider has contacted them about a Covid-19 shot; only 14% say their health insurer has -HEALTHYLIVE

By Al Cross and Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

Relatively few Kentuckians say they have been contacted by a health professional or their health-insurance provider about getting a Covid-19 vaccine, according to a statewide poll taken Aug. 4 through Sept. 4.

Twenty percent of adults said a doctor, nurse or other health professional had contacted them about vaccination, and only 14% said their health-insurance provider had, found the poll for the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

Foundation President and CEO Ben Chandler announced the poll results during the foundation's annual health policy forum. He said the results for health-care professionals were "a little bit surprising" and those for health-insurance providers were "a real shocker." 

"What this tells us, I think, is that we have a lot of work to do," Chandler said. "Would doctors and health insurance providers reaching out have made a difference in where we are today? Well, I don't know the answer to that. But I do think . . . it's certainly worth a try in the future to think about seeing if we could figure out a way to get doctors and to get insurance companies to reach out more effectively and, and in a systematic way to the people who have not gotten vaccinated." 

The poll also found that Kentucky adults said they would take recommendations on vaccines from their health-care providers, but for reasons unknown the providers have not reached out to them much, Chandler said.

The poll asked Kentucky adults if they agreed with this statement: "Generally, I do what my doctor or health-care provider recommends about vaccines for me." Sixty percent strongly agreed, 22% agreed somewhat, 1% leaned toward agreeing, 9% disagreed somewhat, 6% strongly disagreed and 2% said they didn't know. The older and better educated the respondent, the more likely they were to agree.

The poll found that 27% of adults who had not taken a Covid-19 vaccine said they strongly agreed that they would take their vaccine recommendations from their doctor, which Chandler said suggests that one-third of Kentuckians might be persuaded by their doctor or other health-care provider to get a Covid-19 shot. Just over half have received one dose of a vaccine so far.

"We may be able to figure out a way to create a system where this could happen," Chandler said. "I think we could maybe make up some ground if we did that."

Asked during the forum why more providers aren't reaching out to their patients, Cory Meadows of the Kentucky Medical Association, the lobby for physicians, said it could be due partly to them having a heavier-than-usual workload after pandemic slowdowns last year.

"I do think there's a practical side to it," Meadows said. "Given the workload and the patient load that they have right now, . . . the real side of it right now is catching up on a lot of stuff. But I do think that many of them are starting to have those conversations, especially during this Delta surge."

Dr. Brent Wright of Glasgow while moderating a panel on the first day of the forum it's difficult to have 15-minute conversations to explain vaccines and when you are running 30 minutes behind already.

Meadows acknowledged that some health-care providers may be reluctant to bring up the controversial topic of Covid-19 vaccination for fear of losing patients, but said he did not think that was a significant factor. 

The poll found little statistical difference among various groups of Kentuckians, but the results suggested differences among educational levels. College graduates appeared least likely to say they had been contacted by a health professional, but appeared most likely to be contacted by their health insurer.

Conversely, those with a high-school diploma or less education seemed most likely to say they had been contacted by a health professional, and among the least likely to say they had been contacted by their health insurer. 

More than a third of Kentuckians get free health care through Medicaid, a federal-state program that uses insurance-company subsidiaries to manage relations with the beneficiaries. Any possibility that the beneficiaries may not think of managed-care firms as a "health-insurance provider," the wording used in the poll question, did not arise when the poll was field-tested before it was conducted, pollster Eric Rademacher of the University of Cincinnati told Kentucky Health News.

The Kentucky Association of Health Plans, the lobby for insurance companies in the state, did not respond to a request for comment on the poll. KAHP is conducting a vaccination-promotion campaign, the latest gambit being a sweepstakes for Medicaid beneficiaries, with 20 Disney World trips as the prizes

from KENTUCKY HEALTH NEWS https://ift.tt/3nRNZ2l

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