Patient Education About the Affordable Care Act Contraceptive Coverage Requirement Increases Interest in Using Long-Acting Reversible Contraception.
Publication/Presentation Date
1-1-2017
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires health insurance to cover all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives at no cost to patients, including highly effective long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). Our objective was to determine whether a brief educational intervention about these provisions would increase interest in LARC use.
METHODS: This is a cross-sectional survey of women seeking contraceptive care in an urban outpatient obstetrics/gynecology clinic. We collected baseline contraceptive attitudes and knowledge of the ACA's contraceptive coverage provisions before the intervention. Our primary outcome was interest in using a LARC method before and after reading a short description of the ACA's contraceptive coverage provisions.
RESULTS: Surveys were completed by 316 participants. Most participants (52.8%) could not correctly identify any of the contraception coverage stipulations protected under the ACA. We observed a significant increase in LARC interest after the intervention in all participants (37.3% vs. 44.3%; p = .038), primarily among participants who did not originally identify any ACA provisions correctly (n = 167; 38.3% vs. 48.5%; p = .030). This subset also demonstrated a greater adjusted odds ratio of post-intervention LARC interest (odds ratio, 2.889; 95% CI, 1.234-6.723; p = .014). Interest in short-acting reversible contraception and contraception overall remained unchanged.
CONCLUSIONS: Most women seeking birth control lack comprehensive understanding of the contraceptive coverage protected by the ACA. Incorporating patient education about the ACA's no-cost contraception provision into routine contraceptive counseling may increase interest in LARC use and better enable women to make informed family planning decisions unrestrained by financial considerations.
Volume
27
Issue
2
First Page
152
Last Page
157
ISSN
1878-4321
Published In/Presented At
Durante, J. C., & Woodhams, E. J. (2017). Patient Education About the Affordable Care Act Contraceptive Coverage Requirement Increases Interest in Using Long-Acting Reversible Contraception. Women's health issues : official publication of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health, 27(2), 152–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.whi.2016.11.006
Disciplines
Medicine and Health Sciences
PubMedID
28063850
Department(s)
Fellows and Residents
Document Type
Article