Category Archives: Out of Pocket Expenses

Predicting COVID-19’s Long-Term Impact on the Home Health Care Market

Posted on by • Posted in American Hospital Association (AHA), Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Coronavirus, Economic Crisis, Economic Stimulus, Employee Benefits, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Financially Distressed, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Home Care, Home Health, Job, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Market Consolidation, Medicare, Mergers & Acquisitions, Nursing Home, Out of Pocket Expenses, Palliative Care, Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM), Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance • Leave a comment

Predicting COVID-19’s Long-Term Impact on the Home Health Care Market

Predicting COVID-19's Long-Term Impact on the Home Health Care ...

The Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) and its unintended ripple effects were supposed to be the dominant story this year for the nation’s 12,000 or so Medicare-certified home health care providers. But the coronavirus has rewritten the script for 2020, throwing most of the industry’s previous projections out the window.

While PDGM — implemented on Jan. 1 — will still shape home health care’s immediate future, several other long-term trends have emerged as a result of the coronavirus and its impact on the U.S. health care system.

These trends include unexpected consolidation drivers and the sudden embrace of telehealth technology, the latter of which is a development that will affect home health providers in ways both profoundly positive and negative. Unforeseen, long-term trends will also likely include drastic overhauls to the Medicare Home Health Benefit, a revival of SNF-to-home diversion and more.

Now that providers have had roughly three full months to adapt to the coronavirus and transition out of crisis mode, Home Health Care News is looking ahead to what the industry can expect for the rest of 2020 and beyond.

‘Historic’ consolidation will still happen, with some unexpected drivers

Although the precise extent was often up for debate, most industry insiders predicted some level of consolidation in 2020, driven by PDGM, the phasing out of Requests for Anticipated Payment (RAPs) and other factors.

That certainly appeared to be true early on in the year, with Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED), LHC Group Inc. (Nasdaq: LHCG) and other home health giants reporting more inbound calls related to acquisition opportunities or takeovers of financially distressed agencies.

In fact, during a fourth-quarter earnings call, LHC Group CEO and Chairman Keith Myers suggested that 2020 would kick off a “historic” consolidation wave that would last several years.

“As a result of this transition in Q4 and the first few months of 2020, we have seen an increase in the number of inbound calls from smaller agencies looking to exit the business,” Myers said on the call. “Some of these opportunities could be good acquisition candidates, and others we can naturally roll into our organic growth through market-share gains.”

Most of those calls stopped with the coronavirus, however.

Although the vast majority of home health agencies have experienced a decline in overall revenues during the current public health emergency, many have been able to compensate for losses thanks to the federal government’s multi-faceted response.

For some, that has meant taking advantage of the approximately $1.7 billion the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has distributed through its advanced and accelerated payment programs. For others, it has meant accepting the somewhat murky financial relief sent their way under the Provider Relief Fund.

In addition to those two possible sources of financial assistance, all Medicare-certified home health agencies have benefitted from Congress’s move to suspend the 2% Medicare sequestration until Dec. 31.

Eventually, those coronavirus lifelines and others will be pulled back, kickstarting M&A activity once again.

“We believe that a lot of the support has stopped or postponed the shakeout that’s occurring in home health — or that we anticipated would be occurring around this time,” Amedisys CEO and President Paul Kusserow said in March. “We don’t believe it’s over, though.”

Not only will consolidation happen, but some of it will be fueled by unexpected players.

With the suspension of elective surgeries and procedures, hospitals and health systems have lost billions of dollars. Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association (AHA), estimated that hospitals are losing as much as $50 billion a month during the coronavirus.

“I think it’s fair to say that hospitals are facing perhaps the greatest challenge that they have ever faced in their history,” Pollack, whose organization represents the interests of nearly 5,000 hospitals, told NPR.

To cut costs, some hospitals may look to get rid of their in-house home health divisions. It’s a trend that may already be happening, too.

The Home Health Benefit will look drastically different

With a mix of temporary and permanent regulatory changes, including a redefinition of the term “homebound,” the Medicare Home Health Benefit already looks very different now than it did three months ago. But the benefit will likely go through further retooling in the not-too-distant future.

Broadly, the Medicare Part A Trust Fund finances key services for beneficiaries.

While vital to the national health care infrastructure, the fund is going broke — and fast. In the most recent CMS Office of the Actuary report released in April, the Trust Fund was projected to be entirely depleted by 2026.

The COVID-19 virus has only accelerated the drain on the fund, with some predicting it to run out of money two years earlier than anticipated. A group of health care economics experts from Harvard and MIT wrote about the very topic on a joint Health Affairs op-ed published Wednesday.

“COVID-19 is causing the Medicare Part A program and the Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund to contend with large reductions in revenues due to increased unemployment, reductions in salaries, shifts to part-time employment from full time and a reduction in labor force participation,” the group wrote. “In addition to revenue declines, there was a 20% increase in payments to hospitals for COVID-related care and elimination of cost sharing associated with treatment of COVID.”

Besides those and other cost pressures, Medicare is simultaneously expanding by about 10,000 new people every day. The worst-case scenario: the Medicare Part A Trust Fund goes broke closer to 2024.

There are numerous policy actions that can be taken to reduce the financial strain on the trust fund. In their op-ed, for example, the team of Harvard and MIT researchers suggested shifting all of home health care under Part B.

In 2018, Medicare spent about $17.9 billion on home health benefits, with roughly 66% of that falling under Part B, which typically includes community-based care that isn’t linked to hospital or nursing home discharge. Consolidating all of home health care into Part B would move billions of dollars away from Part A, in turn expanding the Trust Fund’s lifecycle.

“Such a policy change would move nearly $6 billion in spending away from the Part A HI Trust Fund but would put upward pressure on the Part B premium,” the researchers noted.

Of course, all post-acute care services may still undergo a transformation into a unified payment model one day. However, the coronavirus has devastated skilled nursing facility (SNF) operators, who were already dealing with the Patient-Driven Payment Model (PDPM), a payment overhaul of their own.

Regulators may shy away from introducing further disruption until SNFs have a chance to recover, a process likely to take years — if not decades.

Previously, the Trump administration had estimated that a unified payment system based on patients’ clinical needs rather than site of care would save a projected $101.5 billion from 2021 to 2030.

Telehealth will be a double-edged sword

The move toward telehealth was a long-term trend that home health providers were cognizant of before COVID-19, even if some clinicians were personally skeptical of virtual visits. But because the virus has demanded social distancing, telehealth has forced its way into health care in a manner that would have been almost unimaginable in 2019.

In late April, during a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing, President Donald Trump indicated that the number of patients using telehealth had increased from about 11,000 per week to more than 650,000 people per week.

Meanwhile, MedStar Health went from delivering just 10 telehealth visits per week to nearly 4,000 per day.

Backed by policymakers, technology companies and consumers, telehealth is likely here to stay.

“I think the genie’s out of the bottle on this one,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in April. “I think it’s fair to say that the advent of telehealth has been just completely accelerated, that it’s taken this crisis to push us to a new frontier, but there’s absolutely no going back.”

The telehealth boom could mean improved patient outcomes and new lines of business for home health providers. But it could also mean more competition moving forward.

For telehealth to be a true game-changer for home health providers, Congress and CMS would need to pave the way for direct reimbursement. Currently, a home health provider cannot get paid for delivering virtual visits in fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has floated the idea of introducing legislation that would allow for direct telehealth reimbursement in the home health space, but, so far, no concrete steps have been taken — at least in public. With a hyper-polarized Congress and a long list of other national priorities taking up the spotlight, it’s impossible to guess whether home health telehealth reimbursement will actually happen.

While home health providers can’t directly bill for in-home telehealth visits, hospitals and certain health care practitioners can. That regulatory imbalance could lead to providers being used less frequently as “the eyes and ears in the home,” some believe.

A new SNF-to-home diversion wave will emerge

Over the past two decades, many home health providers have been able to expand their patient census by poaching patients from SNFs. Often referred to as SNF-to-home diversion, the approach didn’t just benefit home health providers, though. It helped cut national health care spending by shifting care into lower-cost settings.

At first, the stream of SNF residents being shifted into home health care was like water being shot from a firehose: In 2009, there were 1,808 SNF days per 1,000 FFS Medicare beneficiaries, a March 2018 analysis from consulting firm Avalere Health found. By 2016, that number plummeted to 1,539 days per 1,000 beneficiaries — a 15% drop.

In recent years, that steady stream has turned into a slow trickle, with more patients being sent to home health care right off the bat. In the first quarter of 2019, 23.3% of in-patient hospital discharges were coded for home health care, while 21.1% were coded for SNFs, according to data from analytics and metrics firm Trella Health.

Genesis HealthCare (NYSE: KEN) CEO George Hager suggested the initial SNF-to-home diversion wave was over in March 2019. Kennett Square, Pennsylvania-based Genesis is a holding company with subsidiaries that operate hundreds of skilled nursing centers across the country.

“To anyone [who] would want [to] or has toured a skilled nursing asset, I would challenge you to look at the patients in our building and find patients that could be cared for in a home-based or community-based setting,” Hager said during a presentation at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference. “The acuity levels of an average patient in a skilled nursing center have increased dramatically.”

Yet that was all before the coronavirus.

Over the last three months, more than 40,600 long-term care residents and workers have died as a result of COVID-19, according to an analysis of state data gathered by USA Today. That’s about 40% of the U.S.’s overall death toll.

CMS statistics place that number closer to 26,000.

In light of those figures and infection-control issues in congregate settings, home health providers will see a new wave of SNF-to-home diversion as robust as the first. As the new diversion wave happens, providers will need to be prepared to care for patients with higher acuity levels and more co-morbidities.

“[That’s going to change] the psyche of the way people are going to view SNFs and long-term care facilities for the rest of our generation,” Bruce Greenstein, LHC Group’s chief strategy and innovation officer, said during a June presentation at the Jefferies Virtual Healthcare Conference. “You would never want to put your parent in a facility if you don’t have to. You want options now.”

One stat to back up this idea: Over 50% of family members are now more likely to choose in-home care for their loved ones than they were prior to the coronavirus, according to a survey from health care research and consulting firm Transcend Strategy Group.

Separate from SNF-to-home diversion, hospital-to-home models will also likely continue to gain momentum after the coronavirus.

There will be a land grab for palliative care

Over the past two years, home health providers have aggressively looked to expand into hospice care, partly due to the space’s relatively stable reimbursement landscape. Amedisys — now one of the largest hospice providers in the U.S. — is the prime example of that.

During the COVID-19 crisis, palliative care has gained greater awareness. Generally, palliative care is specialized care for people living with advanced, serious illnesses.

“Right now, we are seeing from our hospital partners and our community colleagues the importance of palliative care, including advanced care as well as appropriate pain and symptom management,” Capital Caring Chief Medical Officer Dr. Matthew Kestenbaum previously told HHCN. “The number of palliative care consults we’re being asked to perform in the hospitals and in the community has actually increased. The importance of palliative care is absolutely being shown during this pandemic.”

As community-based palliative care programs continue to prove their mettle amid the coronavirus, home health providers will increasingly consider expanding into the market to further diversify their services.

Currently, just 10% of community-based palliative care programs are operated by home health agencies.

Demand will reach an all-time high

The home health industry may ultimately shrink in terms of raw number of agencies, but the overall size of the market is very likely to expand at a faster-than-anticipated pace.

In years to come, home health providers will still ride the macro-level tailwinds of an aging U.S. population with a proven preference to age in place — that hasn’t changed. But because of SNF-to-home diversion and calls to decentralize the health care system with home- and community-based care, providers will see an increase in referrals from a variety of sources.

In turn, home health agencies will need to ramp up their recruitment and retention strategies.

There’s already early evidence of this happening.

Last week, in St. Louis, Missouri, four home-based care agencies announced that they were hiring a combined 1,000 new employees to meet the surge in demand, according to the St. Louis Dispatch.

Meanwhile, Brookdale Senior Living Inc. (NYSE: BKD) similarly announced plans to hire 4,500 health care workers, with 10% of those hires coming from the senior living operator’s health care services segment.

Bayada Home Health Care likewise announced plans to ramp up hiring.

“We are absolutely hiring more people now than ever,” Bayada CEO David Baiada previously told HHCN. “The need for services — both because of societal and demographic evolution, but also because of what we anticipate as a rebound and an increase in the demand for home- and community-based care delivery as a result of the pandemic — is requiring us to continue to accelerate our recruitment efforts.”

The bottom line: The coronavirus may have presented immediate obstacles for home health providers, but the long-term outlook is brighter than ever.

 

 

 

 

A 70-year-old man was hospitalized with COVID-19 for 62 days. Then he received a $1.1 million hospital bill, including over $80,000 for using a ventilator.

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Coronavirus, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Health System, High Deductible Health Plans, High Prices, Intensive Care (ICU), Medicaid, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Preexisting Conditions, Rev Cycle Management, Revenue Cycle, Survival Guilt, Ventilators • Leave a comment

https://www.yahoo.com/news/70-old-man-hospitalized-covid-170112895.html

Man, 70, hospitalized with COVID-19 for 62 days gets $1.1 million ...

  • A man in Washington state who spent more than two months in the hospital and more than a month in the Intensive Care Unit with COVID-19 received a 181-page itemized bill that totals more than $1.1 million, The Seattle Times reported.
  • Michael Flor, 70, will likely foot little of the bill due to his being insured through Medicare, according to the report.
  • “I feel guilty about surviving,” Flor told The Seattle Times. “There’s a sense of ‘why me?’ Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor’s guilt.”

A 70-year-old man in Seattle, Washington, was hit with a $1.1 million 181-page long hospital bill following his more than two-month stay in a local hospital while he was treated for — and nearly died from — COVID-19. 

“I opened it and said ‘holy (expletive)!’ ” the patient, Michael Flor, who received the $1,122,501.04 bill told The Seattle Times.

He added: “I feel guilty about surviving. There’s a sense of ‘why me?’ Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor’s guilt.”

According to the report, Flor will not have to pay for the majority of the charges because he has Medicare, which will foot the cost of most if not all of his COVID-19 treatment. The 70-year-old spent 62 days in the Swedish Medical Center in Issaquah, Washington, 42 days of which he spent isolated in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). 

Of the more than one month he spent in a sealed-off room in the ICU, Flor spent 29 days on a ventilator. According to the Seattle Times, a nurse on one occasion even helped him call his loved ones to say his final goodbyes, as he believed he was close to death from the virus.

While in the ICU, Flor was billed $9,736 each day; more than $80,000 of the bill is made up of charges incurred from his use of a ventilator, which cost $2,835 per day, according to the report. A two-day span of his stay in the hospital when his organs, including his kidneys, lungs, and heart began to fail, cost $100,000, according to the report.  

In total, there are approximately 3,000 itemized charges on Flor’s bill — about 50 charges for each day of his hospital stay, according to The Seattle Times. Flor will have to pay for little of the charges — including his Medicare Advantage policy’s $6,000 out-of-pocket charges — due to $100 billion set aside by Congress to help hospitals and insurance companies offset the costs of COVID-19.

Flor is recovering in his home in West Seattle, according to the report.

 

 

 

 

How Many More Will Die From Fear of the Coronavirus?

Posted on by • Posted in Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Chronic Care Management, Chronic Conditions, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Deferred Healthcare, Emergency Care, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Fear, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Health System, High Deductible Health Plans, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Mortality, Office Visit, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Physician, Preexisting Conditions, Preventable Disease, Preventative Care, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Telemedicine, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured, Unintended Consequences, Virtual Healthcare, Virtual Visit • Leave a comment

Fear of contracting the coronavirus has resulted in many people missing necessary screenings for serious illnesses, like cancer and heart disease.

Seriously ill people avoided hospitals and doctors’ offices. Patients need to return. It’s safe now.

More than 100,000 Americans have died from Covid-19. Beyond those deaths are other casualties of the pandemic — Americans seriously ill with other ailments who avoided care because they feared contracting the coronavirus at hospitals and clinics.

The toll from their deaths may be close to the toll from Covid-19. The trends are clear and concerning. Government orders to shelter in place and health care leaders’ decisions to defer nonessential care successfully prevented the spread of the virus. But these policies — complicated by the loss of employer-provided health insurance as people lost their jobs — have had the unintended effect of delaying care for some of our sickest patients.

To prevent further harm, people with serious, complex and acute illnesses must now return to the doctor for care.

Across the country, we have seen sizable decreases in new cancer diagnoses (45 percent) and reports of heart attacks (38 percent) and strokes (30 percent). Visits to hospital emergency departments are down by as much as 40 percent, but measures of how sick emergency department patients are have risen by 20 percent, according to a Mayo Clinic study, suggesting how harmful the delay can be. Meanwhile, non-Covid-19 out-of-hospital deaths have increased, while in-hospital mortality has declined.

These statistics demonstrate that people with cancer are missing necessary screenings, and those with heart attack or stroke symptoms are staying home during the precious window of time when the damage is reversible. In fact, a recent poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians and Morning Consult found that 80 percent of Americans say they are concerned about contracting the coronavirus from visiting the emergency room.

Unfortunately, we’ve witnessed grievous outcomes as a result of these delays. Recently, a middle-aged patient with abdominal pain waited five days to come to a Mayo Clinic emergency department for help, before dying of a bowel obstruction. Similarly, a young woman delayed care for weeks out of a fear of Covid-19 before she was transferred to a Cleveland Clinic intensive care unit with undiagnosed leukemia. She died within weeks of her symptoms appearing. Both deaths were preventable.

The true cost of this epidemic will not be measured in dollars; it will be measured in human lives and human suffering. In the case of cancer alone, our calculations show we can expect a quarter of a million additional preventable deaths annually if normal care does not resume. Outcomes will be similar for those who forgo treatment for heart attacks and strokes.

Over the past 12 weeks, hospitals deferred nonessential care to prevent viral spread, conserve much-needed personal protective equipment and create capacity for an expected surge of Covid-19 patients. During that time, we also have adopted methods to care for all patients safely, including standard daily screenings for the staff and masking protocols for patients and the staff in the hospital and clinic. At this point, we are gradually returning to normal activities while also mitigating risk for both patients and staff members.

The Covid-19 crisis has changed the practice of medicine in fundamental ways in just a matter of months. Telemedicine, for instance, allowed us to pivot quickly from in-person care to virtual care. We have continued to provide necessary care to our patients while promoting social distancing, reducing the risk of viral spread and recognizing patients’ fears.

Both Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic have gone from providing thousands of virtual visits per month before the pandemic to hundreds of thousands now across a broad range of demographics and conditions. At Cleveland Clinic, 94 percent of diabetes patients were cared for virtually in April.

While virtual visits are here to stay, there are obvious limitations. There is no substitute for in-person care for those who are severely ill or require early interventions for life-threatening conditions. Those are the ones who — even in the midst of this pandemic — must seek the care they need.

Patients who need care at a clinic or hospital or doctor’s office should know they have reduced the risk of Covid-19 through proven infection-control precautions under guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We’re taking unprecedented actions, such as restricting visiting hours, screening patient and caregiver temperatures at entrances, encouraging employees to work from home whenever possible, providing spaces that allow for social distancing, and requiring proper hand hygiene, cough etiquette and masking.

All of these strategies are intended to significantly reduce risk while allowing for vital, high-quality care for our patients.

The novel coronavirus will not go away soon, but its systemic side effects of fear and deferred care must.

We will continue to give vigilant attention to Covid-19 while urgently addressing the other deadly diseases that haven’t taken a pause during the pandemic. For patients with medical conditions that require in-person care, please allow us to safely care for you — do not delay. Lives depend on it.

 

 

 

Cartoon – Let’s begin your exam with a simple coordination test

Posted on by • Posted in Cartoon, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, High Prices, Office Visit, Out of Pocket Expenses, Physician, Physician Practice Management, Rev Cycle Management, Revenue Cycle, Underinsured, Unemployment, Uninsured • Leave a comment

Difference Between Islamic Takaful and Conventional Insurance - ED ...

Cartoon – It remains to be seen which will get you first

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Cartoon, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Essential Health Benefits, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, High Prices, Out of Pocket Expenses, Underinsured, Unemployment, Uninsured • Leave a comment

Cartoon – It remains to be seen which will get you first | HENRY ...

Cartoon – Out of Pocket Experience

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Cartoon, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, High Prices, Out of Pocket Expenses, Underinsured, Unemployment, Uninsured • Leave a comment

Cartoon – Out of Body Feeling vs Out of Pocket Experience | HENRY ...

Open (Your Wallet) Wide: Dentists Charge Extra For Infection Control

Posted on by • Posted in American Dental Association, Coronavirus, Dentist, Infection Control, Infection Control Fee, Infectious Virus, Out of Pocket Expenses • Leave a comment

https://khn.org/news/open-your-wallet-wide-dentists-charge-extra-for-infection-control/

Open (Your Wallet) Wide: Dentists Charge Extra For Infection ...

After nearly two months at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Erica Schoenradt was making plans in May to see her dentist for a checkup.

Then she received a notice from Swish Dental that the cost of her next visit would include a new $20 “infection control fee” that would likely not be covered by her insurer.

“I was surprised and then annoyed,” said Schoenradt, 28, of Austin, Texas. She thought it made no sense for her dentist to charge her for keeping the office clean since the practice should be doing that anyway. She canceled the appointment for now.

Swish Dental is just one of a growing number of dental practices nationwide that in the past month have begun charging patients an infection control fee between $10 and $20.

Swish and others say they need the extra money to cover the cost of masks, face shields, gowns and air purifiers to help keep their offices free of the coronavirus. The price of equipment has risen dramatically because of unprecedented demand from health workers.

Dentists say they struggle to pay these extra costs particularly after most states shut down dental offices in March and April for all but emergency care to reserve personal protective equipment for hospital use. They are also seeing fewer patients than before the pandemic because some fear going back to the dentist and at the same time dentists need to space out appointments to keep the waiting room uncrowded.

Nearly two-thirds of dental offices across the country have reopened for routine care, according to the American Dental Association.

The association, which sets industry standards, says dentists who opt to charge the extra infection control fee should disclose it to patients ahead of each visit, a spokesperson said.

“The infection control fee is helping us mitigate the costs of the extra expenses,” said Michael Scialabba, a dentist and vice president of 42 North Dental, whose 75 dental offices in New England are charging an extra $10.

Why don’t dentists just raise prices instead? Dentists said they have little or no leverage with large insurance companies to force them to raise their reimbursement rates. The ADA asked insurers to take into account additional COVID costs dentists face and many insurers responded by agreeing to pay extra fees.

For example, Harrisburg, Pennyslvania-based United Concordia Dental agreed to pay dentists $10 per patient per visit in May and June to offset their PPE expenses for all fully insured clients. The company has more than 9 million members nationwide.

The new infection control fee upsets some patients, although most understand that the cost of dentistry has increased, said Rishi Desai, director of operations and finance at Swish Dental, which has eight locations in the Austin area. “We are just as frustrated with all of these, too, but as a small business we had to reassess things.”

Desai, whose wife, Viraj, is a dentist and the founder of the dental chain, said the extra money will help the practice survive. “We are not making money off this,” he said. “This is just to sustain us so we are not bleeding out cash.”

He noted that last year Swish was paying about $6 for a box of 20 face masks. Today, $6 buys a single mask. The dental office has installed sneeze guards, staffers are wearing face shields over their masks, and the offices have added air filtration systems and hired additional sanitation staff members to clean their offices every day.

He estimates the offices are working at only about half capacity since reopening in mid-May. In weighing how to handle the extra costs, Swish was reluctant to cut employee wages, he said. “Everyone is trying to figure this out,” he added.

Kim Hartlage, office manager of Klein Dental Group in Louisville, Kentucky, said insurers recommended the office add an infection control fee. The insurers balked at raising their reimbursement rates.

She said the small office has had to buy many more disposable masks and gloves. “We’ve had to step up our game,” she said. So far, she hasn’t heard any feedback on the $10 fee. “We have very understanding clients,” she said.

Tamar Lasky, an epidemiologist, said she likes her Owings Mills, Maryland, dentist and was glad the office was communicating the many precautions it was taking to prevent the spread of COVID-19. But she was stunned when informed by email that a $15 “infection control charge” would be added to her bill.

“I can readily imagine there are a range of additional expenses, as well as a loss of revenue associated with the pandemic, but infection control is not an extra service. It is part of the practice of dentistry,” Lasky said.

“I’m not sure what is the best solution to the increased costs of tighter infection control, but this new charge may not be covered by insurance, and that passes all the burden to the patient.”

 

 

 

Americans’ deepening financial stress will make the coronavirus a lot harder to contain

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Deferred Healthcare, Economic Crisis, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, High Prices, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured • Leave a comment

https://theconversation.com/americans-deepening-financial-stress-will-make-the-coronavirus-a-lot-harder-to-contain-139741

Americans' deepening financial stress will make the coronavirus a ...

Preventing deaths from COVID-19 depends on people who get it seeking treatment – which also allows authorities to track down whom they came in contact with to reduce spread.

But, as the economic pain and joblessness caused by the statewide lockdowns continue to grow, more Americans are experiencing severe strains on their personal finances. This threatens our ability to contain the pandemic because those feeling the most financial stress are much less likely to seek medical care if they experience coronavirus symptoms, according to my analysis of a recent Federal Reserve survey.

As an economist who studies how individuals make health care choices, I worry that in the coming months even more people will consider forgoing vital treatment to pay rent or some other bill – especially as the extended unemployment benefits, rent moratoriums and other relief are set to expire soon.

‘Just getting by’

The Fed conducts a survey of the economic health of U.S. households every quarter, most recently near the end of 2019. In April, it conducted a supplementary but similar survey to quickly gauge how people were handling the coronavirus crisis. Results of both surveys were released on May 14.

The Fed tries to measure financial stress in three key ways. Its surveys ask respondents if they are unable to pay all their monthly bills, couldn’t cover a US$400 emergency expense, or are “just getting by” or worse.

Even before the pandemic hit, the picture wasn’t pretty. In October, when the fourth-quarter survey was conducted, 42% of employed respondents reported fitting at least one of these descriptions, while over 8% said they fit all three. Those figures jumped to 72% and 20% for low-income workers.

But by April, tens of millions of people who had jobs in October lost them as most nonessential businesses across the U.S. either closed or reduced their services. The unemployment rate shot up to 14.7% that month – the highest since the Great Depression – and is expected to climb further when the May data are released on June 5.

The Fed’s April survey, however, paints an even broader picture of the economic impact of the pandemic. In that survey, about 28% of the previously employed respondents said they either lost their job, were being furloughed, had their hours cut or were taking unpaid leave. This has been financially devastating to many, with 68% of this group reporting one of the stresses listed above and 28% saying they were experiencing all three, regardless of income level.

Forgoing medical care

Separate questions in the surveys demonstrate just how strong the link is between financial and physical health.

The October survey also asks those respondents if they had skipped a doctor’s visit during the previous 12 months because of the cost. More than 20% of those who reported one of these financial stresses said they had, while almost 46% of those with all three said so.

In April, the Fed asked a more timely question: “If you got sick with symptoms of the coronavirus, would you try to contact a doctor?”

A third of those respondents who also said they’re experiencing all three financial stresses said “no.” This is especially significant because, unlike the October question, it describes a current, known threat, rather than referring to a previous medical issue of unknown severity. And the widely reported urgency and seriousness of the coronavirus suggests someone wouldn’t treat the decision to seek a doctor’s care or advice lightly.

Relieving the stress

That was back in April, less than a month into the coronavirus lockdowns. If the same questions were asked today, I believe the numbers would look a lot worse.

In the middle of a serious pandemic, we don’t want sick people avoiding treatment because they’re worried they won’t be able to put food on the table. This would likely worsen the spread of the coronavirus and make it a whole lot harder to contain.

As Congress debates additional measures to mitigate the economic and financial effects of the pandemic, it would be wise to keep in mind the connection between financial stress and individual decisions to seek medical care.

 

 

 

 

The Essence of Big Pharma

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