As far as the future, who can say. It remains to be seen exactly what impact cuts to Medicare will have on Neurologist's income. Cuts in the RVU payment rate will not be unique to Neuro. We are a bit under the radar as far as high cost procedures and I think other specialties will come under close scrutiny before we do. Cracking down on NCT studies with no emg done at the same time by every primary care doc would be a net positive.
As far as the current slow down, we saw some drop off in new patient volume in November and December but things have picked up some since the first of the year. We are in an area that has not been hit particularly hard, though. Our volume is about flat compared to last year which by itself is not so bad but it means that the new person we hired in July is not all that busy. I can see that the slow down could have some impact on group's decisions on whether to hire or not.
