What's the future for chiropractic inclusion in hospitals? A survey of 240 hospital chiefs conducted by the consulting firm CampbellWilson of Dallas, Texas, gives these figures:
- 25% said they plan to add some form of alternative health care within the next 12 months.
- 35% plan to offer "holistic medicine."
- 16% plan to offer chiropractic.
- 9% plan to offer biofeedback.
The hospital chiefs were not optimistic about health care in general:
- 38% said they would not recommend health care as a career to high school or college age students.
- 65% claimed that a decrease in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement was a principal concern.
"Health care executives are being asked to do more with less, and the pressure is taking its toll," observed Dana Wilson, a senior partner of CampbellWilson. Wilson noted, however, that hospital administrators see the services of complementary and alternative medicine practitioners as a possible way to make up for the revenues they expect to lose under the new Medicare Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS).
The OPPS is widely viewed with disfavor by administrators: 80 percent indicated they expected to lose revenue under the OPPS; 75 percent said they expected OPPS losses to be greater than five percent; and 39 percent estimated losses would be greater than 10 percent.
