50% of women skip care due to high medical costs, care access

Half of adult women skip or delay their medical care, mostly due to healthcare costs, limited care access and poor healthcare experiences, according to a new Deloitte report.

Overall, women are 35% more likely to skip or delay necessary medical care than their male counterparts, and 31% more likely to skip care due to high healthcare costs, the report showed.

"These findings are a stark reminder of how women's health and wealth are inextricably intertwined," Kulleni Gebreyes, MD, the U.S. chief health equity officer and a managing principal in Deloitte's life sciences and healthcare division, said in a statement. "By dismantling the barriers women have identified, together we can create a future where women don't have to make the difficult choice between maintaining their health or maintaining their financial wellbeing."

High medical costs emerged as the leading factor keeping women from accessing necessary healthcare, with 21% of women saying as much. This is up from 15% of women who said the same in 2015.

What's more, there's a gender disparity in cost-related care access barriers. Women are 31% more likely to skip or delay medical care than their male counterparts, mostly because they face higher costs and have less financial security to manage unexpected medical costs.

A previous Deloitte report showed that women pay $15.4 billion more in out-of-pocket healthcare costs than men annually. This trend isn't solely driven by maternity care access; the same Deloitte analysis revealed that, even when excluding maternity-related healthcare, women need an average of 9.9% more healthcare services than men.

In addition to high medical costs, women are skipping medical care because they simply can't get in the door.

According to this most recent Deloitte report, 15% of women skip or delay medical care because it takes too long to obtain an appointment, and 8% are deterred by a long clinic or hospital wait time. Overall, women are 50% more likely to skip medical care due to long wait times than their male counterparts.

Care access barriers go beyond appointment availability and timeliness; women also can't get to the appointments they do book. Women are twice as likely to report transportation barriers to care compared to men, with 9% of women reporting such issues.

Moreover, it's women who are mostly driving the push for more convenient care access and citing virtual care as a good option. Of those who have tried virtual care access, 80% said they liked it because it was more convenient than in-person care. Another 45% said the appointment slots were more convenient for them, 19% said the appointments were less time-consuming and 17% said it was easier to book a virtual appointment.

Finally, the report revealed that women are more likely to report poor experiences with healthcare, and those are also keeping them out of the exam room.

Overall, 7% of women said they skipped or delayed medical care because of a prior experience that did not go well. In a separate 2021 Deloitte report assessing patient trust levels in healthcare, 40% of women said they skipped or avoided medical care specifically because of how a provider or staff member treated them previously. Such negative interactions can sow distrust in the medical system, Deloitte said.