Basalt practice sees patients forced out of treatment

Kristin Boronski knows what the recent Medicaid retraction and changes to Medicaid reimbursements has meant for people who live in her small town of Basalt and all up and down the valley.

The private practice has been “insurance blind” since its founding. About 15 percent of the roughly 3,500 patients Mid Valley Family Practice sees annually use Medicaid to access the health care they need. That’s a welcome addition to practices that accept Medicaid in an area of the state with high health care costs and limited providers.

“We don’t know where they are now, or what has happened to them.”

~ Kristin Bronoski, practice manager at Mid Valley Family Practice in Basalt, speaking about the patients who lost Medicaid and left the practice’s outpatient detox center

In response to need, the practice opened an outpatient detox center that provides daily check-ins with providers, medication assistance and help for the support person identified to help the individual struggling with addiction. The small center can help about four patients at a time.

But with many of these individuals losing Medicaid, the practice has seen numerous patients stop treatment before it is complete.

“We don’t know where they are now, or what has happened to them,” said Boronski, who is the practice manager, making her the chief financial officer and chief operating officer all rolled into one.

Boronski is currently working with a patient that was aware that his Medicaid had lapsed. He assured her he was trying to re-apply because he was certain he was eligible. After seeing him weekly for 3 months, his current bill is more than $1,000 and Medicaid continues to deny him. The clinic has begun trying to help him find outside funding rather than have him leave treatment.

These struggles faced by many are in addition to the elevated costs of all types of insurance, housing and consumer goods in Colorado’s resort communities and the smaller towns that surround them and provide service workers. Wages across the valley have not kept pace.

Boronski said that Mid Valley Family Practice would never considering stopping seeing patients who use Medicaid because it is a “core value.” But she noted that the private practice does have to carefully manage the percentages of patients seen from private insurance versus Medicaid. The current upheaval around Medicaid has made that job more challenging.

“We live in a day and age where things are not equitable and we need to build equity,” Boronski said. “That is one of the things that Medicaid does. It offers an essential service to people who really really need it. Particularly here.”