Doctors Hospital grows amid Medicaid cuts

Such growth can be seen in patient demand at Doctors Hospital’s Nixa Clinic.

“We’ve only been open for one year,” Alexis Brown, director of communications for Doctors Hospital, said of the Nixa clinic. “It has gone beyond expectations. We always knew Nixa was a good place for our services to be, but we didn’t realize how quickly it would grow and the need would be there.”

The Nixa clinic opened in late 2004 with six health care providers.

“Right now we have 12 providers in Nixa. We’re looking, as we expand, to potentially be up to 20 providers,” Brown said.

There are now more than 50 employees in Nixa and she anticipates employing 100 or more once expansion is complete.

Doctors Hospital has seen a shift in revenue due to Medicaid changes.

Brown said that 42 percent of revenue used to come from Medicaid. “Our most recent figures, in August, that number dropped to 30 percent,” she said. “With Medicaid dropping off we see a readjustment, but still right around 80 percent is governmental, approximately 10 percent private pay and 10 percent private insurance.”

The overall numbers have stayed the same, Brown said, but the shift is due to the fact that some services are no longer covered by Medicaid.

Physical therapy has been the area most affected by Medicaid cuts, Brown said.

“Medicaid cut out outpatient physical therapy so, for example, if a Medicaid patient needed to have knee surgery, Medicaid will cover the surgery but not the physical therapy to get them back using their knee,” Brown said. “So what we have decided, as a hospital, is that we will take care of the patients because we see that as a liability for us to fix someone and then send them out without the proper physical therapy to get back the usage.”

Medicaid will cover amputation of a leg, she said, but “Medicaid does not pay for training on how to walk again with an artificial limb. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Doctors Hospital is working with patients on a case-by-case basis to meet their outpatient physical therapy needs that aren’t covered by Medicaid. Coverage ranges from Doctors Hospital picking up the tab to working out minimum co-pay arrangements with patients.

“Right now we’ve just gotten into a couple of months of it so we’re focusing on some other areas – some growth in our rural health communities to cover and offset some of these things. We’re hoping there will be a change in what’s covered,” Brown said. “We’re doing what we feel is right for our patients and we’re covering it by being extremely cost conscious.”

Brown said that it’s too soon to say how much Doctors Hospital has spent providing the services that are no longer covered by Medicaid.

[[In-content Ad]]