Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1974 [PAGE 299]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1973]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

289

Report on Pharmaceutical Services and the HospitalMedical-Surgical Fee, Urbana At the President's request, Chancellor Peltason presented the following report as requested by the Trustees on July 19, 1972, concerning a oneyear experience under the new Hospital-Medical-Surgical Fee and the pharmacy operation supported in part through the fee.

As per your request, I wish to report upon our experiences this year under the new Hospital-Medical-Surgical Fee plan, as approved by the Board of Trustees on March 15, 1972. Our experience has been excellent. The payment of a fee for health services by each student has had some demonstrable effects. More students now use the Health Service than in previous years. The number of doc tor-patient visits at the Health Service has increased, while visits to private physicians have declined. Students continue to play an active, positive role in the development of Health Service policies. The Health Service Student Advisory Committee has a warm, high regard for Dr. L, M. Hursh, Director of the Health Service. The group meets regularly with Dr. Hursh, members of the medical staff, and staff from my office. Information and advice are sought and responded to. The students play an active role, encouraging users of the Health Service to report concerns and complaints and, more importantly, responding to complaints personally by interpreting Health Service policy and practice or by recommending changes that will minimize complaints and dissatisfactions. Occasionally their enthusiasm leads them to overstep the generally accepted role of an advisory committee, but this has not been a serious problem. Oar experience with the Health Service as being fully supported by a student fee has been excellent. I look forward to continued positive contacts with students on such matters. The matter of a pharmacy to provide prepaid pharmaceutical services to students was a question much discussed in the Spring Semester, 1972. Much campus, community, and general interest focused on the pharmacy proposal. This pharmacy now operating at the Health Service provides prescription drugs at no additional cost when the prescription is written by a Health Service physician. If a student prefers a physician from the community, he has his prescription filled by a privately-owned pharmacy and is reimbursed for one-half the cost through the student health insurance program. Insurance benefits cannot be applied to prescriptions written by McKinley physicians, nor can the McKinley pharmacy fill prescriptions written by physicians not employed by the University. The pharmacy service was initially hampered by forces beyond the University's control. The initiation of the price and wage freeze caused a delay in the approval of the increase in fees. This delay caused our ordering of basic prescription drugs for the pharmacy to be deferred. Thus the school year opened without all of the pharmaceuticals necessary for a well-stocked pharmacy to be on hand. Both of these led to some generally well-publicized dissatisfaction with the new service. The Illinois Association of Pharmacists and some local pharmacy owners opposed the new program and presented arguments against it. In approving the fee which included pharmacy service, the Board of Trustees indicated a desire for an analysis of the program after one year. Our data suggest that the pharmacy at the Health Service has had a clearly beneficial effect on the health of students over the course of the school year. Whereas a study completed in 1970 showed that about 21 per cent of the prescriptions written by Health Service physicians were not filled, in 1972-73, 99.5 per cent of prescriptions are being filled. The number of student visits to the Health Center has increased; to what this can be attributed is not clear, but it reverses a trend of gradual decline. Earlier studies suggested that students failed to have prescriptions filled largely because of expense; inconvenience may well have been a factor, less frequently mentioned but likely to be true. Prepaid service, convenience, and accessibility may now be the overwhelming factors in the changes we see in the use of Health Service facilities and services.