Lack of Reliable Transportation for Daily Living Among Adults: United States, 2021

Excerpt

Access to reliable transportation is a critical aspect of daily life that influences access to healthcare services, as well as social engagement and employment opportunities. For this reason, provider groups such as the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Accountable Health Communities (AHC) have designed provider tools to ask patients about transportation problems in addition to other social determinants of health.^,

Previous work has documented the fact that adults with less education and lower family incomes are more likely to lack reliable transportation. We expanded this analysis to consider the prevalence of lack of reliable transportation by health insurance status and type, general physical and mental health status, and presence and number of chronic conditions. The analyses by health insurance type and by presence and number of chronic conditions may help providers—such as users of the NACHC and CMS AHC tools—look for the kinds of patients for whom lack of reliable transportation may function as a barrier to accessing healthcare.

The data source is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) 2021 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS-HC). The MEPS-HC question on reliable transportation was developed by NACHC and is used by CMS’s AHC.^, The analysis sample represents all adults aged 18 and older in the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population. All differences mentioned in the text are significant at the p<0.05 level or better.