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BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published February 5, 2009

Worth Health Center is undergoing a review of its expenses and the programs it offers due to increasing health costs and tough economic times. While Worth has not made any significant cuts, according to Director of Health Services Beth Kotarski, the center is using this review as a chance to reexamine the program’s priorities.

“I really do think that it is a campus-wide opportunity to look at what we have been doing just because we have always been doing it,” Kotarski said. “Sometimes something like a budget check makes you think about whether we are doing things the best way we can, not just economically but also system-wise — does it give the most help to the most people?”

So far, Worth has increased the hours of the school’s nurse practitioner, Suzie Long-Blum, so that she is available on campus five days a week. This change allows Long-Blum to be available for more walk-in appointments and will allow Worth to provide more advanced services for extended hours to meet students’ needs. “One of the beauties of my job is that it is adaptable to the needs of Health Services and students,” Long-Blum said. “We are trying to be flexible and provide the best services for students we can.”

The biggest service that is under review and that might be changed, however, is the school’s policy of providing free prescription drugs to students. “As long as we can remember, Swarthmore has been able to have a small dispensary of certain meds, not a full pharmacy, that we could give for free to students,” Kotarski said. “But a lot of medications have gone up astronomically in price, and it’s just not reasonable to be able to give out free medicines anymore.”

According to Kotarski, the medications affected by this change would be limited to prescription drugs, especially those that are most expensive, while antibiotics and over-the-counter medications will remain free.

Drugs that Worth would charge for would mostly “be medications you can buy with prescription drug cards which, now that we have a delivery service for, is not a hardship for students,” Kotarski said. “And they can still buy them from Worth: they just would have to pay a modest fee for them.”

Swarthmore’s Health Services is one of the most comprehensive set of programs of its type, according to Kotarski, who worked at the health center at Haverford for twelve years before coming to Swarthmore.

At Haverford, outpatient services are free but “there are fees for all diagnostic tests, allergy injections, medications, supplies, inpatient care, bed boards and failure to keep appointments without adequate notification,” according to the school’s health services website. Students, therefore, are responsible for filing claims to their insurance companies. Mono and Quick Strep tests cost Haverford students $15 each, whereas both are provided free of charge at Swarthmore.
Even at schools with more comprehensive health services like Williams College, which provides medications for free if they are available, students must pay for long-term medications and for any lab services, which are contracted out to a nearby hospital, according to the school’s health center website.

One prominent Swarthmore health policy that will not be changing is the price and availability of birth control. The prices of these also show the stark differences between Swarthmore and other schools in what is provided to students.

At Haverford, birth control pills cost $20 per pack according to its website, but at Swarthmore the same medication is provided for only $11 a pack. Additionally, Worth has worked with the Student Health Advisory Committee to provide free condoms for dorms and student organizations that request them, according to Kotarski. At Haverford, on the other hand, students must pay $1 per three male condoms and $1 each for female condoms or dental dams, according to its website.

SHAC has been involved in other health services decisions since its inception last year to serve as a collection of student leaders that provides Worth with students’ perspective on health care services, according to Kotarski. The committee is meeting again this week to plan the second annual Student Health Fair, according to SHAC member Ayanna Johnson ’09.

“We will be doing a lot of planning and making an agenda for this year’s fair,” Johnson said. “We will definitely start advocating for mental health programs, like a stress reduction workshop, as well as maybe a program that helps link students to other services in the area where they can volunteer.”

Along with plans for the fair, Johnson hopes to discuss a stronger presence for a program against sexual violence, modeled after a program at Haverford. She is also interested in the possibility of bringing a second nurse practitioner to campus to help ease the workload of the college’s doctor. Most of these, however, are long-term goals that may take more than this year to complete, according to Johnson.

Most of the short-term changes that will be seen in Worth have to do with prescription medications and the possibility of adopting a co-pay system like several other schools in the area have done. In a co-pay system, a student with medical insurance pays a flat fee to cover some of the costs of medical service.

This system will hopefully defray some of the costs to the college. “The savings are significant,” Kotarski said. “We could save enough to squirrel away some money over the next couple of years and use it to start up more wellness initiatives and more preventative health services, which is something colleges are moving towards.” These programs could include classes on stress reduction as well as programs to explore the mind-body connection and alternative medicines.

Kotarski and the Worth staff will have a chance to discuss these programs with fellow colleagues in college health services as well as show off the Swarthmore campus when they host this year’s annual South Eastern Pennsylvania College Health Association meeting. According to Kotarski, this conference will allow the school to network, learn from a variety of talks on pressing issues in college health and provide a chance to bring together program leaders from the area. “It’s an opportunity to look at our programs and compare them to peer institutions,” Kotarski said. “And really make sure that we are at least offering the best of what everyone else is offering.”

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