Access to medicaid providers: availability of mental health services for children and adolescents in child welfare in Louisiana

The purpose of the study was to determine the level of access that youths in child welfare have to mental health providers in a single state. Mystery shoppers called every provider publicly advertised in Medicaid managed care organization networks. Results showed that 25.4% of the advertised network was able to schedule a new appointment for a child in Department of Children and Family Services guardianship. There were 9.7 accessible providers of any discipline (MD, PhD, or licensed masters-level clinician) per 10,000 Medicaid-enrolled youths in the population. The level of access to MDs was 4.1 times lower than the nationally recommended level.