Medical care actually can wait…

We’ve blogged about it before – times are tough, and some medical care is making its way into the discretionary category of family budgets.

Here is an excellent article from the Washington Post speaking to the issue of medical care as it pertains to the constricting family budget.  Reducing needed medical care is obviously not the right long term approach, but medical care is a bill to pay, and when budgets shrink, tough decisions will be made by our patients.

And yep, this affects the bottom line of private practices throughout the U.S., so we’d better have a strategy in place to stay in the black.

Nationwide, the number of consumers who went without a prescription, tapped into retirement savings to pay for health care or skipped a doctor visit for themselves or a child has risen since last year, according to a survey released this summer by the Rockefeller Foundation and Time magazine. One-quarter of the 2,000 respondents, for example, said they had decided not to see a doctor because of cost in 2008, up from 18 percent the year before. Ten percent said they did not take a child to the doctor for the same reason.

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Click here or call (888) 827-5613 for information on a free program dedicated to helping private practices throughout the U.S. strategically adjust to the slowing economy.  Free program runs through March 31st, 2009 and is open to practice owners and administrators of any healthcare discipline.

Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a national healthcare consulting and management firm located on the west coast.  Tannus can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website by clicking here.