Some doctors may drop costly vaccines
ATLANTA - About one in 10 doctors who vaccinate privately insured children might drop that service largely because they are losing money when they do it, according to a survey.
A second survey revealed startling differences between what doctors pay for vaccines and what private health insurers reimburse: For example, one in 10 doctors lost money on one recommended infant vaccine, but others made almost $40 per dose on the same shot.
The survey was revealing even to some doctors. "Many physicians really weren't aware that they were getting reimbursed so little," said Dr. Gary Freed of the University of Michigan, a co-author of both articles published in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics.
The studies are the first to attach numbers to doctors' complaints that they are only breaking even - or even losing money - when they give shots.
"It's a pleasure to see a real study to show we're not just making this up," said Dr. Herschel Lessin, a pediatrician in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., who said his practice's spending on vaccines has more than doubled from 2006 to 2007.
Researchers say there's no evidence that significant numbers of doctors are quitting the vaccination business yet because of financial concerns.
But health officials are worried. Reimbursement concerns were behind an exodus of doctors from vaccine programs in the 1980s, which contributed to a resurgence of measles in 1989-91 that caused 11,000 hospitalizations and 123 deaths.
This year, US measles cases rose to the highest level in more than a decade, mainly because some parents are choosing not to get their children vaccinated.
ASSOCIATED PRESS 