Beacon Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine treats lots of patients for the kinds of back and joint problems that aren’t life-or-death but can make daily life a challenge.
Lately, more are deciding to tough it out a little longer rather than get surgery.
“I know of at least three people who have said, ‘I acknowledge that I need surgery, I’d like to have it done,’ but they’re concerned about leaving their jobs right now, thinking that if they go on disability, it will be easier to get laid off,” said Marilyn Orr, Beacon’s executive director.
As they cope with a faltering economy, consumers are including health care among areas where they’re cutting back, recent data suggest. Adding to the problems for health care providers is the increasing popularity of high-deductible health plans, which put patients on the hook for higher out-of-pocket costs – costs they frequently can’t afford.
Nearly half of respondents to a Kaiser Family Foundation national survey in October said someone in their family had skipped pills or cut back on needed medical care in the past year because of the cost.
And the number of prescription drugs dispensed in the United States is down slightly in 2008 after years of growth, according to the research firm IMS Health.
The VNA’s business volume is down about 10 percent in October compared with the same month a year ago. For the first three quarters of 2008, volume had been up about 6 percent over the same period last year.
Patients come through referrals from doctors’ offices, nursing homes and hospitals, and Falberg believes his organization’s declines relate to volume drop-offs in those settings.
Seven Hills Women’s Health Centers is seeing patients cancel elective procedures such as urodynamics, used in the diagnosis and treatment of urinary stress incontinence. And even when they do come in for care, patients often end up owing the practice money they can’t pay, because of deductibles and co-payments that can reach into the thousands.
If you really want to know the state of the economy, ask a plastic surgeon, said Dr. Mark Mandell-Brown. The number of tummy tucks and face lifts people request, he said, is a very sensitive indicator of how things are going financially.
Which is to say, at the moment, not very well; procedure volume is down 20 to 25 percent in Mandell-Brown’s practice, based on Montgomery Road.
The Mayfield Clinic & Spine Institute is seeing flat volumes, compared to recent years when it has experienced sustained growth. At the same time, patients aren’t paying their bills as promptly as they used to, said Mike Gilligan, CEO of the group.
At Gastroenterology Consultants of Greater Cincinnati, administrator Greg Bush, too, is experiencing bad debt issues. He is working on fixes such as getting more money from patients up front, setting up more aggressive payment plans, giving patients quick-pay discounts and allowing people to pay bills online.
“We’ve had to turn over a lot more people to collections,” he said.
One group seeing increased demand is the St. Vincent de Paul Charitable Pharmacy, on Bank Street in Cincinnati’s West End. In the past month-and-a-half, the pharmacy has had to turn some patients away for the first time since it opened two years ago.
The pharmacy fills about 140 prescriptions a day for the working poor, those who have lost their jobs and those experiencing a gap in their coverage, and the number of medications dispensed has been increasing every month since the pharmacy opened.
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