Abstract
Over the past four years, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project has closely monitored which facilities providing abortion care in the state are open. Since April 2013, when debate began around the bill that became House Bill 2 (HB2), the number of facilities providing abortion care has dropped from 41 to 18. According to our interviews with facility staff, many of these closures have been related to difficulty obtaining hospital admitting privileges for physicians at the facilities, while others have been related to difficulty complying with the requirement that facilities meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs). This ASC requirement is currently enjoined by the US Supreme Court while it determines if it will consider hearing a legal challenge to HB2 in its next term.
To determine how well the existing facilities are meeting the demand for services and if the clinics’ capacity to meet the demand differs across the state, we have performed monthly mystery calls to open facilities providing abortion care since November 2013, when the admitting privileges requirement went into effect.
These calls sought to document wait time, defined as the number of days between when the mystery caller telephoned the facility and when the next consultation appointment was available. With a time-sensitive procedure such as abortion, wait times serve as a measure of facility capacity to meet the demand for services.