Birth control and HPV vaccine Gardasil cost were brought up by both myself and my colleague at GPSS. The Health Plan recognizes that the increased cost of birth control is a significant issue for students, but cannot negotiate for the kind of price breaks that Wal-mart and Target have simply because they don't have the same kind of buying power. They also are unsure whether they can justify a discount on one particular class of drugs, and thus are simply providing students with birth control at cost. Gardasil is already offered at a discount compared to what they pay for the vaccine series. We (GSA, GPSS, YCC) are still actively looking for routes the Health Plan may pursue in trying to lower the cost of both birth control and the HPV vaccine for students.
The cost of Prescription Plus was also brought up. The Health Plan agreed to provide some statistics on plan usage and cost projections for various possible scenarios.
The Chief of Mental Health and Counseling, Dr. Lorraine Siggins, gave an overview of her department. She explained that the department has seen an increase in demand for counseling services from the student population at Yale that is disproportionately large in comparison to the increase in demand seen in other departments, partly due to the increasing interest the nation has shown in college mental health, and partly due to the growing acceptance of mental health care in the population as a whole. She explained how the intake procedure works and how they decide when students will start their course of treatment, and said that patients who believe they have not received an appointment in an appropriate time frame may contact her to ask about their particular case.
There were also several pieces of news that may be of interest to graduate students:
1) The Health Plan has made new hires in Optometry and Dermatology, which should help improve access to care in both departments. They are also currently searching for a clinician for the Athletic medicine division.
2) The Health Plan is beginning to put together podcasts, which will hopefully be a source of both general and health plan-specific information for the Yale community. The Podcasts will be available on the Yale iTunes site. If you have topics you would like to see them address in this format, please let me know.
Liz,
do we know the estimated number of (graduate) students who use the mental health services, or who have tried to use the services.
I would be interested in learning these numbers, and percentages... including duration of the counseling, and how frequent students come back 6 months later, 12 months later, etc...
-dennis
Hi Dennis,
About ~20% of graduate students used Mental Health services last year, though this number varied considerably by department. There has also been a marked increase in the number of grad/professional students who have been using the service this year (~100 more than last year already).
As for duration of counseling, repeat visits, etc., I'm not sure of the statistics. All students who come in are offered 3-4 months (~ 1 semester) per year of weekly counseling sessions, but if a student has one specific issue they'd like to work on, they sometimes ask for fewer sessions. From what Dr. Siggins said in the meeting, I get the impression that there is a significant subset of the graduate student population that comes in regularly, at the start of the school year (which means it's easier to get appointments quickly in December than in September). The rest are either there because of a particular crisis situation or because of a specific problem they would like to work on.
I'm not sure if I could get the numbers for repeat visits on demand, simply because the Mental Health department does not keep records on computer, in order to keep their records separate from the rest of YUHS. I'll look into it after the break, though, if you like.
Liz