Doctors face money woes as patients stay away
Connecticut health care providers say they were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, as many people not infected with the respiratory illness delayed seeking care for other conditions.
Some experts said they hope to see a rebound as the state tentatively reopens — not just to repair the financial health of providers, but to preserve the physical and mental health of patients.
Research has shown a drop in medical visits across multiple categories during the pandemic. For instance, a poll released in April by the American College of Emergency Physicians and Morning Consult showed that 29 percent of the 2,201 adults surveyed said they had delayed or avoided seeking medical care due to concerns about COVID-19 infection.
The ACEP also reported that some hospital emergency departments reported a drop of nearly 50 percent during the pandemic. Though those fears are understandable, they’re harmful to the care providers and the patients, said Christopher
Lehrach, president of Nuvance Health medical practice. Nuvance is a health system that includes Norwalk, Danbury, and New Milford hospitals, as well as other care providers.
“Hospitals are already under intense pressure to contain costs and will have to double down on that notion” in the wake of the pandemic, Lehrach said. He said the health system has seen sharp declines in emergency department visits of anywhere between 40 to 60 percent in the past few months.
That means a huge loss of revenue from which it will be difficult to recover. Though he’s confident the Nuvance hospitals will survive, he does fear that other small health networks throughout the country could fold.
“There will be some hospitals that don’t make it,” Lehrach said. “I am concerned about independent hospitals that won’t be able to weather this storm.”
But Lehrach’s worries about a drop in patient volume are not just financial. During the peak of the pandemic, many patients were not seeking care for non-COVID medical conditions, such as heart disease, allowing those conditions to worsen, Lehrach said. “It speaks to how fearful our patients were,” he said. “It’s sad when you think about it — that people were at home suffering (because they were afraid to seek care).”
Though health experts and others have expressed concerns about a “second wave” of COVID-19 cases in a few months, Lehrach said he’s worried about a different kind of health crisis down the line.
“I think the real second wave is going to be from care that’s been neglected over the past few months, allowing conditions to exacerbate,” he said.