Access to quality health services encompasses access to primary care, preventive services, and other health care services on a continuum of care in the health care delivery system. These services provide indicators of quality in the delivery of selected services in four settings:  clinical preventive care, primary care, emergency services, and long-term care and rehabilitative services.

Since the release of Healthy People 2010, progress has been made in identifying national-level data sources for nearly all the objectives in this focus area. With few exceptions, the objectives with a baseline and at least one additional data year are making progress toward their targets.

Access to quality health services underpins the two overarching goals of Healthy People 2010: increase quality and years of healthy life and eliminate health disparities.

Sufficient national-level data were lacking to assess health insurance coverage for clinical preventive services. However, data from public and private insurance plans indicated that, over the past few years, most health insurance plans (excluding many "catastrophic health plans") provided coverage for a basic package of clinical preventive services, screening, or preventive counseling services, such as for weight control or tobacco use.¹

Access to regular and consistent medical care also is important to quality of life and life expectancy. Objectives related to this goal that moved toward their targets included increasing the proportion of persons with a usual primary care provider and reducing difficulties or delays in obtaining needed health care.

Pediatric care also is making advances. Decreasing hospitalization for pediatric asthma moved toward its target. Pediatric protocols for online medical direction and pediatric guidelines for emergency and critical care also showed progress toward their targets. Such guidelines and protocols are likely to improve health-related quality of life and life expectancy as health care providers gain access to, and use of, evidence-based prevention interventions and treatment.

The second overarching goal of Healthy People 2010—eliminating health disparities—is being advanced by several objectives. Between 1997 and 2003, the disparities gap between poor and middle/high-income persons with health insurance decreased by 10 to 49 percentage points. Nonetheless, the difference between these two groups remained high; poor persons were three times as likely to lack health insurance as were middle/high-income persons. Data for racial and ethnic representation in health professions also showed overall progress toward the targets for increasing the numbers of persons from racial and ethnic populations graduating from schools of nursing and pharmacy. However, the majority of objectives showed improvement in reducing disparities over the first half of the decade.