Exhaustion and shortages have disrupted the clinical workforce. Nearly 60% of the doctors, advanced office providers and nurses who responded to the survey said that their teams are understaffed and 40% lack the resources to operate at their full potential. 8 Many providers face an extreme or moderate shortage of allied health professionals. Half (51%) of adults who currently have debts due to medical or dental bills say that last year, the cost was a disadvantage to getting the medical exam or treatment recommended by a doctor.
The high cost of prescription drugs also leads some people to reduce their medications in a variety of ways or to try to obtain them outside of a clinical setting. Adults currently have some type of debt due to the medical or dental bills of their own care or that of another person, including approximately a quarter of adults (24%) who say they have overdue medical or dental bills or that they cannot afford, and one in five (21%) who have bills that they are paying over time directly to a provider. Of the remaining requests not related to erectile dysfunction, inpatient services were classified as medical or surgical according to a pedestrian crossing created by the CMS that identifies groups related to the diagnosis of severity (MS-DRG) of Medicare as medical or surgical.
