Nearly one in five people on Medicare travel 50 or more miles one way to see a neurologist, a doctor who diagnoses and treats diseases of the brain and nervous system, according to research published in. The study found that people who require specialized neurologic care for diseases such as brain cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and multiple sclerosis travel long distances most often.
To determine travel distance, researchers compared participants' home ZIP codes and their neurologists' office ZIP codes. Long distance was defined as 50 or more miles one way. Among neurologic conditions, long‐distance travel was most common for people with brain and spinal cord cancers, with 40% of these participants traveling long distances; ALS, 30%; and MS, at 23%.
When looking at over 165,000 participants who visited a neurologist for the first time within the first three months of the study, 62,000 had at least one follow-up visit with the same neurologist. Participants who traveled long distances had a 26% decreased chance of a follow-up visit compared to those without long-distance travel.