Heidi Verticchio calls the Eckelmann-Taylor Speech and Hearing Clinic “a hidden gem” on the Illinois State University campus.
“Many of the folks who know about us on campus think that we only serve members of the community, and then community members think we only see ISU community members,” Verticchio, its clinical director, said in an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
The clinic, which has nearly a dozen healthcare professionals but is operated mostly by students in training, offers a range of services in speech language pathology and audiology. That's everything from language therapy to gender-affirming voice training for transgender clients and hearing aids and cochlear implants.
Verticchio said the clinic serves both students and the community at large, with some clients coming from several hours away. She said about 75% of the clinic’s clients are on Medicaid.
She’s concerned some of those clients could lose access to care because of new cuts to the federal program for low-income Americans, and those with disabilities.
Verticchio said low-income clients are drawn to the clinic because low Medicaid reimbursement rates for many hearing services discourage private healthcare providers from accepting them.
“Providers can’t make money on that hearing aid,” she said.
Verticchio said her initial reaction was “panic” when she heard Congress was considering substantial cuts to Medicaid.
Now that the cuts have been signed into law as part of a large tax and policy bill, Verticchio said it’s still unclear how that will impact the clinic and its approximately 4,500 clients it sees each year.
“We also need to understand what those implications can be because it’s not just a matter of we are not going to pay for that,” she said.
Work requirements
New work requirements are said to be primary cost-cutters for Medicaid.
Verticchio said many of the clinic's clients have challenges to finding work, based on what accommodations they need and what other health issues they may have that contribute to their speech or hearing problems.
“The misleading part is why are they unable to work,” she asked. “For some of those, it can be physical disabilities, mental disabilities, intellectual disabilities. It can be a variety of different things. It’s really hard to say what that impact in going to be on any one person.”
Student impacts
The impact on students is also unclear. The clinic has close to 120 graduate students who see and treat clients as a requirement to graduation, in addition to its 250 undergrads who may observe clinical visits.
Maggie Verticchio, Heidi’s daughter, is a second-year audiology student at ISU.
She says if fewer Medicaid clients can receive care at the clinic, it will be harder to reach the required 1,800 hundred clinical hours to graduate.
“That’s not just clinical hours sitting in the clinic. That is clinical hours of actively seeing and serving patients,” she said. “For example, [due to a lack of] transportation, if they 'no show' that day, we lose those hours. That was a huge concern I know for a lot of students.”
A bulk of those hours typically comes during students’ full-year externship in their final year, but if Medicaid limits care for patients, she said that could limit students’ ability to acquire the training required to graduate on time.
Heidi Verticchio said the clinic has tried to improve access to care by establishing mobile clinics in Springfield, Carlinville, Clinton and at Chestnut Health Systems in Bloomington. She said she’s optimistic the clinic will be able to continue the Springfield clinic in the coming year.
Backlogs
Verticchio said cuts to Medicaid could ultimately make it harder for some clinics to stay open, which could lead to backlogs for those who need care.
“That’s just going to be a longer wait, the fewer organizations and practices that are seeing clients who will take any kind of coverage that they would have,” Verticchio said, adding the clinic’s audiology clients are already on a three-month waiting list.
Verticchio said some clinics may decide to shift to an entirely free clinic, a move that she said does not seem feasible at ISU and would also eliminate the need for training on insurance reimbursements.
Verticchio said the clinic and her students are exploring ways to advocate at the local and state level, particularly to share stories about how the cuts may impact students and their clients.
