AAP Voices

As a large Independent Pediatric Group Practice Without Walls in the Chicago area, we see many pandemic-related problems, both for patient health and for our fiscal survival: 

• Some employed doctors volunteered to take furloughs, but we still cut the hours of our employed physicians and nurse practitioners by 50-80%.
• We reduced nursing staff dramatically and hope we don’t have to lay off any employees.
• Despite our best efforts, parents often are reluctant to come into the office for well care. Our vaccination rates are down from the same period in 2019, some by as much as 79%. MMR vaccinations are down by 45%.
• Visits to our own after-hours care is down 90%. If this continues, we will no longer be able to offer this care, which has traditionally kept patients out of ERs and away from the lower-quality care in retail-based clinics. We fear our patients are not seeking care when needed and will suffer more serious illnesses as a result by going to busy ERs and exposing themselves unnecessarily to COVID-19. 
• This crisis came at a time when many of our doctors were already experiencing some degree of burnout. This will compound that—we are doing our best to mitigate that.

It has become increasingly clear that size of practice, efficiency in revenue cycle management and high-quality pediatricians are not effective antidotes to this crisis. Without in office well-child visits at the usual rate, it will be difficult if not impossible for an independent pediatric practice of any size to financially weather this pandemic crisis.