Giving Compass' Take:

• Katie Duffey reports that researchers found that providing teens access to same-day access to long-acting birth control saved more than $2000 in medical costs. 

• How can funders support programs that provide access to long-lasting birth control? 

• Learn how Medicaid expansion is linked to birth control access. 

Providing adolescents who want birth control the ability to get a long-acting reversible contraceptive on the same day as their clinic visit could lead to significant cost savings for insurance providers, say researchers.

For the study in JAMA Network Open, the team worked to determine what the cost savings would be by providing same-day access to long-acting reversible contraception, from the perspective of insurance companies, in particular, Medicaid, to adolescents. Considered the most effective contraception for adolescents, long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC, includes intrauterine contraceptives (IUCs) and implants.

According to Tracey A. Wilkinson, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, the lack of clinics in Indiana offering same-day access to these contraceptives came as a surprise when she began her work in the state as a health services researcher.

Through their work, the group found that same-day LARC placement led to overall lower costs to the payer—$2,016 on average—compared with placement at a later visit—$4,133 on average. Additionally, they found that the numbers of unintended pregnancies and abortions decreased in association with providing same-day placement.

In the paper, the researchers came up with four recommendations for state Medicaid officials from the data compiled through their study:

  • Provide bonus payments for clinicians to incentivize same-day contraceptive access. Doing so would overcome the reimbursement-to-cost differential that leads to the two-visit strategy and mitigate carrying-cost concerns.
  • Create a single, uniform reimbursement structure, preferably as a medical benefit, to mitigate some of the procedural delays that occur when a device has to be ordered for an individual patient as opposed to being used for any presenting patient.
  • Pursue a strategy to purchase LARC devices in bulk and distribute devices up front to clinics desiring to provide same-day LARC access.
  • Develop a policy whereby LARC devices that were ordered for a specific patient but ultimately unused after a certain time could be used for another patient.

Moving forward from the study, Wilkinson says she hopes the findings will help push the needle forward in helping provide access to same-day contraceptives of all kinds to patients when and if they need it.

Read the full article about same-day, long-lasting birth control by Katie Duffey at Futurity.