Why Women’s Clinics Are Closing: Why It’s Time to Move On
A new study from Johns Hopkins University shows that women are struggling to find quality medical care, even as the nation faces a massive shortage of primary care physicians.
The study, released Thursday by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that while women made up less than a third of the population in 2020, they were the second-largest group of uninsured patients and the second most likely to lack primary care doctors.
The report also found that women accounted for about one-third of all primary care providers, but that more than half of those physicians were female.
“It’s hard to know how women in particular are feeling about the future of primary health care in this country,” said the report’s co-author, Dr. Sarah R. Fuchs, a senior associate dean of the Johns Hopkins Medicine and Public Health Bloomberg School.
Fuchs, who co-authored the report with University of Michigan’s Dr. Maryann W. Chavkin, said that the findings of the study show that women may have been overrepresented in primary care in the past but are now having difficulty finding quality health care.
Women were more likely to report that they had had a primary care physician since last year than men, Fuchs said.
But the number of women reporting they were in primary health coverage rose by only 3.4 percent compared to 2.7 percent for men.
In contrast, men were more than twice as likely as women to report being in primary coverage, the report found.
The researchers found that nearly 60 percent of women who reported being in a primary health plan in 2020 had a doctor who was female.
Founded in 1964, Johns Hopkins has more than 50 medical centers and hospitals.
The medical school is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.
A new study from Johns Hopkins University shows that women are struggling to find quality medical care, even as the…
