The ACC this week published its first CardioSurve Newsletter, which presents some interesting findings from several surveys of a group of 350 U.S. cardiologists. It covers a couple of different topics, including electronic health record adoption, use of guidelines and treating atrial fibrillation, but I think the most interesting finding of the last couple of months of CardioSurve data is what the panelists said about the effects of declining reimbursements and rising costs.

The survey asked panelists what actions they’ve done in the following 30 days:

• 58% said they reduced staff to save expenses
• 17% said they’ve limited services
• 8% said they’ve reduced office hours and availability
• 4% said they retired and
• 4% said they limited the number of new Medicare patients

Another 28% said they have done none of the above, and 20% reported “other.”

Private practices appear to be extremely affected by the changing landscape, with private practices 2.5 times more likely to report having taken some form of cost-cutting action in the past 30 days compared to other practices. In addition, private practices surveyed reported looking to hospital integration as a potential solution to their current woes, with 30% of migration plans focused on hospital integration (as compared with merging with another practice).

These findings show that cardiology is making changes to keep up with the current health care environment – some not necessarily for the better. Congress may think that we can sustain the increasing reimbursement cuts, whereas in fact, we have to make real changes to the way we practice (cutting necessary staff, limiting services) that affect the patient experience.

The ACC is in the process of compiling a larger, more robust survey of more than 2,000 cardiologists that appears to be even more damning. Keep your ears open in mid September for the results.

How do the results of this survey reflect your experiences? Have you done any of the above?

 

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