Well, new reporting is exposing major failures within New Jersey's healthcare system.

Failures that advocates say are costing lives.

A NorthJersey.com investigative series finds that despite decades of disability rights laws, barriers remain everywhere.

People with disabilities describe routine care as a battleground of rushed appointments, inaccessible exam rooms, and missed diagnoses.

Gene Myers worked on the investigation.

He's a reporter covering disability and mental health at The Record and NorthJersey.com.

And he joins me now to share more about what he and his team uncovered.

Gene, welcome.

Thanks so much for sharing this reporting.

It was emotional and eye-opening.

What stood out to you when you gathered these personal experiences from folks across the state?

Now, many different kinds of bias and how many barriers there are.

There was rushed care, inaccessible doctors' offices, doctors who weren't trained.

There was just so much in every aspect of health care.

You open the piece with a bit about a woman named Kelly Boyd from Mercer County who's lived most of her life with rheumatoid arthritis.

Can you share a little bit about the experiences that she told you about and what it's been like for her just to go to visit a doctor?

She had a number of terrible experiences.

She had an experience at one doctor's office where she called the head to ask if they were accessible.

When she got there, there was a curb outside.

She was trying to manage the curb.

People saw her, employees, the receptionist, saw her struggling to get in.

Nobody got up to help.

When she got into the office, the things like the exam table were not accessible.

They couldn't weigh her.

And then, to top it all off, the doctor had no clue about her medical condition, rheumatoid arthritis, as you said, and asked her a couple of times if she was a dwarf because of her size, which was clearly -- the doctor hadn't done the homework.

The doctor didn't understand the condition, and she was insulted.

-How common were stories like Kelly's?

Was that the norm, as opposed to the exception?

-It is the norm.

There's a ton of stories like hers.

Every -- Because disability -- 25% of people have disabilities.

So it's a huge -- it's a huge population.

You have the silver tsunami coming.

And these are stories that won't just benefit people who maybe, like Kelly, we think, are kind of more typical of disability.

They will be useful for everybody, accessibility and understanding people's needs.

What are the consequences, Gene?

I mean, we talk about missed diagnoses.

What type of consequences?

What are the outcomes when this is the type of care that these patients are getting?

The World Health Organization found that people with disabilities die up to 20 years earlier than people without disabilities.

And this wasn't because of their conditions.

This was because of inaccessibility.

When you have this much trouble going to the doctor, you don't go for your screenings.

It's harder to find doctors you can go to.

I found about five accessible clinics in the state.

Everybody else, it's a coin toss whether you're going to be able to get in, whether they will have the training to understand your condition, whether the exam equipment will work for you.

So what ends up happening is a lot of people don't do their routine maintenance and that's even outside of things like Medicaid and other problems when it comes to paying for the visit.

Right, I mean, so there's the training component for physicians, there's the accessibility, but also, as you say, as your reporting pointed to, is Medicaid and fewer New Jersey doctors who accept Medicaid.

What type of outcome does that lead to?

And what does it mean, especially for families whose children, adult children with disabilities, then age out of some options?

There's a couple of problems there.

I mean, New Jersey is the state with some of the few... It's one of the worst states when it comes to accepting Medicaid payments.

That's number one.

As an adult, there's a lot less care available to you.

And again, the training, we find that pediatricians are often more flexible.

They're more likely to understand that appointments might take more time, that people might have different needs, might have to have things explained to them differently.

And so pediatricians are better at that.

And so when you have people with special cases, people who need more time, people let's say on the autism spectrum, typically according to Autism New Jersey, they'll try to stay with their pediatricians as long as they can because there's more understanding there.

Very quickly, Jean, in the couple seconds we have left, what will your series look at next?

We're looking at a number of things.

We're looking at how care is managed in the state.

Often people with disabilities might find that their care is being managed not by their own doctors or nurses but by the people at these health insurance companies who, you know, maybe the real motive there is budget more than care.

Sure.

We will find people who have lost nursing hours, therapy hours, things that they really need.

We will be looking at Medicaid.

We will be looking at a number of things.

Jean Myers, thank you so much for sharing this report.

And good to talk to you.

Thank you.

Support for The Medical Report is provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

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