SAYRE – U.S. Rep. Fred Keller (R-12) has been visiting health care organizations across his district in recent weeks to get a better sense of their priorities while also sharing about the latest legislative action in Washington D.C. that could potentially affect them.
On Wednesday, he met with Guthrie’s administration in the School of Nursing board room, where those concerns included rural disadvantages when it came to supplies during the COVID-19 response, Medicare payments and recruitment, and the complexity of serving both New York and Pennsylvania communities under their different guidelines.
With personal protective equipment and other supplies not only used for emergent care, but routine care as well, Scopelliti said expected supplies ended up redirected to the hot spots, leaving Guthrie officials worried about a shortage.
Luckily, he added, Bradford County didn’t experience many COVID-19 cases.
“We were fortunate that we never to to that level (of experiencing supply shortages),” Scopelliti said. “ … That’s not to say that behind the scenes there wasn’t anxiety and worry about being prepared for those things.”
When it comes to Medicare payments, Guthrie Chief Financial Officer Philip Ryan said the methodology doesn’t favor the more routine services that are offered more in the rural settings, resulting in a “natural bias” toward the urban areas with more specialized services.
Asked how long that’s been an issue, Ryan said, “I think the rural health community would say forever.”
“It’s certainly been the last 25 years,” Scopelliti added. “It’s been a long time.”
With recruitment, Scopelliti noted that rates of pay are often set by urban hospitals with more resources, making it more difficult for rural facilities to budget for top talent.
Officials also expressed concerns with the amount of testing supplies they’ve received despite hearing that more is being made available. And although they said they were ahead of the curve when it came to telemedicine, they’ve encountered issues due to the lack of broadband connectivity in the area.
Keller said being able to have these conversations with his district’s health care organizations “is so important because providing health care to rural communities really looks different than in urban areas and we want to make sure that we’re understanding what the providers, who do a great job here across PA-12, need and what we should be advocating for so that they have the resources to get the job done.”
During his visit, Keller highlighted the RURAL HELP Act that he proposed in July to bring more equality to inpatient Medicare reimbursement payments between rural and urban hospitals. He also touted the Lower Costs, More Cures Act proposed late last year that, according to a summary on govtrack.us, would make medical expense tax deductions permanent, cap out-of-pocket costs for senior citizens under the Medicare Part D program per year, keep larger drug companies from paying generic drug producers to delay their products in order to reduce competition, and makes insurance companies provide a cost for drugs at a doctor’s office before a prescription can be written for a patient.
“We always appreciate the opportunity to speak directly to our representatives,” said Scopelliti. “They do a lot of hard work and we want to make sure they are fully informed when they are doing their work.”
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