Trevor Fetter, CEO of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., has said emergency room visits have not slowed since passage of the healthcare reform law.
Mr. Fetter made the comments yesterday during an interview on CNBC's morning news program Squawk Box. He noted that Tenet's employed-physician base is beginning to see more scheduled visits, as "people who've signed up for the exchange insurance plans are being told by those plans that they are able to have one free checkup every year."
But Mr. Fetter said Tenet hasn't seen the slowdown in ER visits that some supporters of the healthcare reform law anticipated. "Are emergency room visits down? No. Emergency room visits are up. But emergency room visits have been up every quarter for a very long time. Has the growth rate slowed? No." Mr. Fetter said this is "exactly what happened in Massachusetts."
Mr. Fetter may be referring to a recent study, published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, that found emergency department use steadily increased in the years after Massachusetts enacted a 2006 healthcare reform policy that provided near-universal healthcare coverage.
"There is a trend across the country, and there has been for a long time, of using emergency rooms in part because they have become more efficient. What happened in Massachusetts was so many people got access to healthcare, health insurance, they couldn't see their doctor because there wasn't enough supply, so they ended up going to the emergency room," said Mr. Fetter. "The capacity of emergency rooms, we have made them more efficient and reduced the weight times."
On Monday, Tenet released its financial results for the first quarter of this year. The company said there was a 2.7 percent rise in ED visits on a same-hospital basis. Overall, Tenet fielded a $32 million loss in the first quarter.
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