Medicare Pushes ACCESS Without Provider Directory
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- Medicare is actively pushing the ACCESS model while failing to tell patients which providers offer it, creating a transparency gap between promotion and provider-directory availability.
- ACCESS has been in effect for approximately one month as of STAT's check-in, making the missing provider information an early-implementation issue rather than a long-standing one.
Why it matters: If Medicare steers beneficiaries toward ACCESS without disclosing participating providers, patients can't verify whether their preferred doctors are in the program before enrolling—undermining informed choice in a model explicitly designed to expand access. The mismatch between promotional push and directory disclosure hits hardest for the dual-eligible and complex-care populations ACCESS targets.
