English Prof. Macklin Smith receives one less birthday present
every year now — a card inviting him for an annual physical
at the University’s Periodic Health Appraisal Unit. Smith
said he depended on those reminders.

“I’m an absent-minded professor,” Smith added
jokingly.

A report written earlier this year by the Budget Study of the
Senate Advisory Committee for University Affairs predicted that
quality health care for faculty, including the ability to spot
diseases early, might be diminished by the slow death of PHAU.

“Not all medical care programs offer an annual physical
examination, descriptions of the various programs provided by the
Benefits Office are vague and there is no evidence that diagnostic
services equivalent to those provide by PHAU are available through
such programs,” the report states.

The University created PHAU in 1956 to provide a program where
faculty received physicals and preventive health care advice. It
expanded throughout the years to include advice for professors
travelling abroad who needed ample immunizations. In recent years,
any faculty and certain staff who participated in the Blue
Cross/Blue Shield program received reminders on their birthdays to
make appointments with PHAU.

In 2000, due to rising costs, the administration, in conjunction
with the provost’s office, decided to stop advertising the
program with mailed reminders. The goal was that less people would
take advantage of the program as older faculty retired and younger
faculty were unaware of it.

PHAU Director Terry MacLean said she is unsure whether the
University’s insurance plans offer similar benefits.

“I think that’s going to be difficult. That’s
going to be the question that these other units are going to have
to address,” MacLean said. “It’s been a very nice
service.”

In addition, the report predicted the University might end up
losing money.

“There will be a modest short-term budgetary savings from
termination of the program but a long-term increase in expenditures
due to the cost of treating disease states that were avoided by
early diagnosis and treatment,” the report stated.

The report foresaw some of these increased costs, noting that in
2002 the cost for the unit to care for one individual was $30.73,
while the same employee’s medical plan averaged $4,129.

But last week at the SACUA meeting, Provost Paul Courant noted
that other programs already offered similar services.

“The current plan which has been in effect for a number of
years has been not to eliminate it, but not to advertise it,”
Courant said.

But several professors noted the convenience that the unit
offered, including shorter waits for physicals at the unit than at
the Medical Center.

“I find it much more user-friendly than going over to the
hospital,” neuropsychology Prof. Stan Berent said. “If
you have a special problem, they follow up on it.”

MacLean said there has already been a dramatic 50-percent
decrease in usage during the past three years.

“It gets compounded by retiring folks leaving the area and
no one has had a reminder since the end of 1999,” MacLean
said.

But Smith noted that he had not noticed any faculty complaints
on the issue. Economics Prof. William Adams said times have changed
in the last 47 years and the University can now offer more
options.

“I suspect that when the periodic health appraisal was
first offered to employees, the health insurance options available
to employees included no HMOs and no preferred provider
organizations,” Adams said.