38
KERN BUSINESS JOURNAL
October / November 2014
Kern’s health care industry booms, but there’s room for improvement By Jose M. Granados
A
strong health care industry benefits everyone in the community, including businesses. A healthy community produces a healthy and productive workforce. Given that the local health care industry benefits everyone in the community, let’s examine how effectively it takes care of us. At first look, Kern County has a thriving health care industry. Key economic indicators show a healthy growth over the past few years. For example, Bakersfield has new facilities like the AIS Cancer Center at San Joaquin Community Hospital, as well as facilities and service expansions at other local health care providers. Revenue wise, the local health care industry has experienced rapid growth over the past 10 years. Back in 2001, core health care industry (comprised of hospitals, clinics, doctors, dental care, etc.) registered annual revenue of $918 million. In 2011, this market sector registered $1.6 billion in annual revenue, a 74 percent growth. Currently, health care brings in near $2 billion in annual revenue, doubling over a period of 15 years. Very few industries can claim such growth. Although not as profound as the revenue growth, the health care’s industry demand for employees has been significant. The local health care industry added more than 3,000 employees over the past 10 years and now employs more than 18,800 people. As robust as Kern County’s health care industry may seem, there are still opportunities for improvement and growth. According to the California Department of Public Health (County Health Status Profiles 2014), Kern County has a high rate of mortally, ranking 48th out of 58 California counties. Furthermore, Kern County ranks high for diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart disease. A recent study revealed that some patients travel out of the county for needed healthcare services. These and other key indicators show opportunities for growth in the health care industry. From Kern County consumers’ perspectives, there seem to be disparities in how they rate their health compared to official reports of health outcomes. Most Kern County adults rate their health as fair or better. However, more than 66,000 Kern adults saw a cardiologist in the past 12 months. More than 85,000 purchased cholesterol medication in the past 12 months, and more than 112,000 purchased high blood pressure medicine. Only 14 percent of Kern adults did not buy medication in the past 12 months.
Moreover, Kern County ranks 57th for deaths due to diabetes out of California’s 58 counties. Kern ranks 54th for coronary heart disease and 53rd for chronic lower respiratory disease. Kern adults lag behind the nation and other California cities when it comes to the use of medical providers for basic health needs. In the past 12 months, for example, 35 percent of Kern adults visited a dentist, compared to 47 percent of adults in Los Angeles and 51 percent of U.S. adults. To make matters worse, Kern adults are less likely to jog, hike, bicycle or play basketball compared to adults in Los Angeles. Kern adults are more likely to participate in somewhat sedentary activities such as bowling, fishing, camping and flower gardening. In terms of health care access, 78 percent of Kern County adults have some type of health insurance. In spite of Covered California’s efforts to enrolled local uninsured adults under The Affordable Care Act, there are more than 130,000 adults (22 percent of Kern County adults) without insurance. The majority of those without health insurance are young adults, 71 percent of them are younger than 45. They are also likely to live in low- to mid-income households. Nearly 80 percent of those without health insurance live in households with annual incomes of less than $50,000. Employment wise, 36 percent are employed full time and 23 percent are employed part time. All these indicators, as well as many others, support the same thesis: while Kern’s healthcare industry has
Bakersfield chosen for expanded breast cancer testing
C
omprehensive Blood and Cancer Center in Bakersfield has been named the first site in the nation where breast cancer patients can obtain a promising experimental drug through an expanded access program.
Pfizer Inc. is developing the drug, called Palbociclib, which began clinical trials several years ago. CBCC participated in the trial through a research partnership with UCLA. Five patients from Bakersfield were
come a long way over the past few years, there is still a lot of room for improvement and growth. Jose M. Granados works for The Bakersfield Californian in the Market Research Department. This market analysis is based upon data from Scarborough Research, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis and California Department of Public Health.
among 165 people who received the therapy from 2010 to 2012. The trial went well, so the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave Palbociclib a “breakthrough therapy” designation in 2012. The designation expedites the review and approval of treatments deemed groundbreaking. Now Pfizer is rolling the drug out again for expanded testing, and Bakersfield is the first market of several where it will be available.
Cancer is abnormal cell growth. Some breast cancers are driven by hormones while others are not. So called “hormone positive” breast cancer accounts for about 60 percent of stage 4 cancers, or cancers that have spread beyond their point of origin. The drug works by arresting the ability of hormonepositive cancer cells to divide and multiply. — Courtenay Edelhart, The Bakersfield Californian