The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion has improved access to surgical services for Medicaid patients.

Or so says a new study published in JAMA Surgery, which reports that

In this study of patients with 1 of 5 common surgical conditions, Medicaid expansion was associated with a 7.5–percentage point increase in insurance coverage at the time of hospital admission. The policy was also associated with patients obtaining care earlier in their disease course and with an increased probability of receiving optimal care for those conditions.

As a result, the study found,

The ACA’s Medicaid expansion was associated with increased insurance coverage and improved receipt of timely care for 5 common surgical conditions.

This development is especially relevant to private safety-net hospitals because they serve so many more Medicaid patients in the predominantly low-income communities in which they are located.

Learn more about the study, its findings, and the implications in the JAMA Surgery report “Association of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion With Access to and Quality of Care for Surgical Conditions,” which can be found here.