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Travel Time for Specialty Medical Care

Imagine having to make a two hundred mile round trip just to receive physical rehabilitation. The latest managed care regulations designed to implement the Managed Care Law define that wait as the standard hospitals will be forced to meet. Tristin Yeager tells the story.

A state task force held their third meeting to revise the managed care regulations. Those regulations include basic requirements for distances between patients and specialty health care providers. Two hundred miles is the maximum distance a patient must travel to receive rehabilitation care and sixty miles is the maximum distance for emergency care. The Insurance Department's Consumer Affairs Director is Thomas Bixby.

Although the travel time for specialty health care may decrease for some in Missouri, the decreased distance may not be short enough if you are the one waiting for medical care.