Barriers to healthcare: Instrument development and comparison between autistic adults and adults with and without other disabilities.
Dora M Raymaker, Katherine E McDonald, Elesia Ashkenazy and 5 others
PMID 27663266WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic adults reported more healthcare barriers than adults with other disabilities or no disability.
Anxiety, difficulty processing information quickly, cost, sensory discomfort in facilities, and trouble communicating with providers were especially common.
Key findings
01Autistic adults reported more barriers than non-autistic adults without disabilities; 56 barriers were endorsed by at least 5% of autistic participants and 23 by 20% or more.
02The most endorsed barriers among autistic adults were fear or anxiety (35%), difficulty processing information fast enough (32%), concern about cost (30%), facilities causing sensory issues (30%), and difficulty communicating with providers (29%).
03Compared with adults with other disabilities, autistic adults endorsed more barriers related to sensory sensitivity, healthcare navigation, waiting rooms, having behaviors misinterpreted, and trouble following medical instructions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample was a convenience sample of people with internet access who could complete an online survey, so results may not apply to all autistic adults. All data were self-reported. The disability comparison group was small compared with the autistic and no-disability groups. The checklist may miss barriers specific to disability groups other than autism. The Affordable Care Act was implemented after data collection, so insurance and cost barriers may have changed. The study did not test whether accommodations or interventions remove the barriers.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that the higher barrier rates prove any accommodation or intervention will reduce them. This was a survey and instrument-development study, not a test of an intervention.