Do Bottom-Line Concerns Impact Care Quality?
There have been frequent comments in the profession that the business pressures of being a large publicly traded company with the need to be focused on cost concerns, profit, and the bottom line have unfavorably impacted the quality of Hanger’s patient care. Looking at the situation realistically, all O&P companies face similar pressures, although Hanger has the added pressure of meeting shareholder expectations of growth and stock value. Throughout the profession, there have been practitioners running the gamut from high-caliber, mediocre, and even downright bad as far as patient care; this range is not restricted to any one type or size of company. And even the best practitioners are not likely to say they have managed to satisfy every single patient or referral source. Much of what has been said is of the “he said, she said” varietyimpossible to either confirm or refute, a fact emphasizing the need for the profession as a whole to continue developing quantifiable outcomes measuremen
