CONCLUSION As the pandemic started to recede in 2022, high-need New Yorkers’ practices and experiences with the health- care system evolved. Often, these experiences were different for those who were more or less economically ad- vantaged. Relative to their more-advantaged counterparts, economically disadvantaged New Yorkers continued to disproportionately rely more on reactive healthcare settings, such as emergency rooms and urgent care cen- ters, and less on more primary care-oriented doctors’ offices and health centers. Economically disadvantaged New Yorkers also found it increasingly difficult to make healthcare appointments, struggled with filling out forms and changing appointments, and reported transportation-related barriers to getting to appointments. More-ad- vantaged New Yorkers, on the other hand, appeared to return to a more “normal” healthcare experience by taking advantage of emerging urgent care centers, finding it easier to make appointments, and being more likely to regularly seek care at a doctor’s office or health center. Some experiences were more universal; regardless of dis- advantage, high-need New Yorkers relied less on telehealth services, grew more likely to receive care outside of standard business hours than they were at the height of the pandemic, and reported more positive clinical inter- actions with healthcare providers. While these results, among others, suggest that in some ways, the interruptions to healthcare access posed by the pandemic began to soften, experiences of healthcare discrimination worsened among economically disadvantaged, high-need New Yorkers through the pandemic. Taken together with the results from the companion brief, which explores delayed healthcare and affordability challenges over the course of the pandemic among high-need New Yorkers, we find differences in healthcare us- age of New Yorkers by economic disadvantage. In many ways, economically disadvantaged New Yorkers contin- ued to struggle with accessing healthcare as the pandemic began to subside—delaying care at high rates, having difficulty affording care, making appointments, having difficulty with transportation, and avoiding care due to discrimination. More advantaged New Yorkers, on the other hand, experienced more of a return to normalcy, indi- cating that the obstacles that the pandemic had imposed for them began to subside. Issues related to healthcare access are especially critical for high-need New Yorkers; the continued barriers to care we observe warrant action so that access can be improved for those that need it most.
PLACES OF HEALTHCARE RECEIPT AMONG NEW YORKERS WITH HIGH HEALTHCARE NEED 16
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