LETTERS: ST. LOUIS HEALTH CARE COSTS LESS

To the editor:

Columbia Sportswear Co., which has a plant in Chaffee, has been sending employees who need surgeries that are not emergency in nature to St. Louis since the fall of 1996. That decision was reached when our insurance carrier was unable to sign a contract with either of the two hospitals in Cape Girardeau after protracted negotiations.

We don't like having to send our employees to St. Louis for care. Many of them do not like the drive, and for patients who are hospitalized for a period of time, it's very hard of the family members who work in the Cape Girardeau area and then must drive to St. Louis to be with their loved one.

However, I've been examining health-care cost and quality issues in Cape Girardeau for a long time. Almost five years ago in a review of claims data we noticed that lengths of hospital stays in Cape Girardeau were twice as long as they were for our employees in Portland, Ore. We also noticed that the costs for equivalent procedures were significantly higher in Cape Girardeau than they were in Portland. At that time, I telephoned our "company" doctor, a fellow who cared for all of our work-related injuries, and asked if he might be willing to discuss the local health-care market with me. I was new to the company and new to issues in Cape Girardeau. When he said he'd be happy to discuss it if I would pay his consulting fee of $200 an hour, I started to get the picture.

For whatever reasons, the health-care facilities and many of the providers in Cape Girardeau have been unable to provide the same competitively priced, high-quality care received in St. Louis. And what's more, employees who have received care in St. Louis prefer going there because they feel they receive higher quality care, are treated better and don't have to wait for hours to be seen.

We would rather have local high-quality health care that is competitively priced. However, until it exists we will make the prudent business decision to provide our employees financial incentives to go to St. Louis for nonemergency care.

BILL BAUMANN, Director of Human Resources

Columbia Sportswear Co.

Portland, Ore.