Healthcare Advisory Committee (HCAC) Update: 2/21/12

Greetings from the ASM Healthcare Advisory Committee!  We are a branch of the Shared Governance Committee and our jobs as appointees are to ensure representation of the UW-Madison student body during discussions of UHS programs and the annual budget.  My name is Scott Lee and today I am going to give you an update on some of the recent happenings in the committee as well report news concerning some specific changes to UHS programs.

First off I would like to mention that we have recently voted on and approved the 2012-13 UHS annual budget on January 19, 2012. I am happy to report that the UHS student segregated fees will not see an increase for the next academic year.  Other changes include the addition of a 24-hour on-call service for mental health crises provided by a contracted provider.  Advantages to this program include a lower total cost given the need to provide on-call staff with compensation time as well as offering an immediate answer to student calls rather than through a page-out and call-back service.  This program is seen as a standard in mental health care and UHS is seeking to provide medical on-call service in the future as well.  This service has been frequently requested by students and is also seen as an appropriate standard of care for UW-Madison students.  Finally, other changes include the ending of the sport’s medicine and dermatology programs.  UHS explained that the cost of the dermatology program would have tripled given changes to staffing from the Department of Dermatology.  Many of the services provided by the Department of Dermatology can also be provided by UHS for a much lower cost.  Many of the services are now provided within primary care.  The same applies to eliminating the sport’s medicine program.

After approval by the HCAC, the budget was then sent to the Student Services Financial Committee (SSFC) to receive additional feedback from students.  The focus of today’s meeting was to address this feedback and to make it known to the rest of the committee.  There was also a presentation from the director of patient satisfaction about recent data collected from surveys sent out to students regarding the quality of students’ experiences with UHS.

After being approved by the HCAC, the UHS budget was sent to SSFC for further review.  One of the key changes that the new budget addressed was the need for new mental health staffing and services.  In recent years there has been a significant need and growth of mental health services, and the SSFC asked for further comments from HCAC on how to describe these needs in a more substantive way.  A figure of $200-250k was formulated and shared with the HCAC.

Next, recent data collected from student satisfaction surveys intended to evaluate students’ experience with UHS was presented.  The results from the surveys deemed to be an accurate representation of the UW-Madison demographic.  Notable results included a significant increase in the satisfaction about the ease of access for care, and a 90% overall student satisfaction rate in 2009-2010 and a 93% overall satisfaction rate in 2010-2011 with regards to the overall UHS experience.  In addition, 90% of students who responded said that they would recommend UHS to another student.  The HCAC would like to remind everyone that these critiques are always appreciated and that surveys have been and will continue to be used to make changes areas where concerns are expressed by students.

So in summary:

• 2012-2013 UHS annual budget has been approved and critiqued by SSFC
• Dermatology and Sport’s Medicine were ended last year since many of these services are now provided within primary care
• UHS will now provide on-call mental health crises services through a contracted provider than by UHS staff members.
• No increase in UHS student segregated fees for next year

 

Sincerely,

Scott Lee