Page 43 - Delaware Medical Journal - January/February 2021
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PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
CASE REPORT
says. “The ability to charge for virtual visits was something [Medicare] added because of the emergency of COVID-19. Will the rules change when it’s no longer an emergency?”
Since the start of the pandemic, Walsh’s patients have been reluctant to get
sleep studies, scans and other testing procedures done, due to fear of being infected while at the hospital. His practice has also struggled at times with being short-staffed due to illness.
Walsh expects all of these issues to persist to some extent into 2021, but to slowly recede as vaccines become more widely available. “I think having enough people vaccinated will probably increase people’s level of
avoiding,” he says. “I would hope, maybe by the summer, things will be better.”
THOMAS P. BARNETT, MD
SPECIALTY: Bariatric and
Vascular Surgery
PRACTICE: Surgical Associates, Dover
“It’s become tougher and tougher to stay in private practice,” says Barnett. “It’s a matter of, how do we push along with this when the rent’s not going down and the malpractice [insurance] rate is going up?”
While the initial downturn in patient volume in the spring has subsided somewhat for Barnett’s practice, it was
still a blow to the practice’s revenue. “We’re subleasing some of our space to other doctors to make up for some of the shortfall,” he says. “We’ve cut our rent by about a third by doing that.”
There is some good news for Barnett’s practice in 2021, he says: “Medicare is now allowing us to do more cases at surgery centers. Unfortunately, hospitals have a
lot of big-time emergencies, so my hernia patient may end up having to wait four or has been recognizing that a surgery center
Like his colleagues, Barnett is hopeful that, with fear of the pandemic likely to subside next year, patient volumes will pick up again.
https://tinyurl.com/2021DMJ
Del Med J | January/February 2021 | Vol. 93 | No. 1
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