Isn't ADA a good bit older than 13 years??  

"The 23-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act....."

Money is required to retrofit offices which are not handicap accessible.  That money, by definition, comes out of patient reimbursement for services.  Can we put this article next to the other string of articles about the increases in health care costs, and observe the conversation that ensues?  Are people just assuming that some unidentified doctor makes so much money that he/she will just not be able to make a payment on a luxury car one month and fix the problems of handicap access?  If so, that's a serious mistake.  The ADA is a typical example of problems in society getting caught up in a pendulum that never seems to find the mid-point, and too often manages to swing to an extreme.  Maybe all offices don't need to be accessible. 

Activists for the disabled team up with hospitals to pick on doctors in private practice.  They raise a hue and cry and demand that all doctors have the expensive equipment needed for the occasional patient in a wheelchair.  The hospitals helpfully point out that they have invested in the expensive equipment already.  The doctors in private practice throw in the towel and sell their practices to hospitals, which already own half of the physician practices in the country.  The doctors become salaried employees.  Every office visit to the hospital affiliated physician now includes a massive charge for hospital overhead.  Your health insurance premiums take another massive leap upward.  And the Globe will moan about the high and rising cost of health care which is attributable in part to schemes like this and shallow reporting like this.

It is unfortunate that this happens and it needs to be addressed. However, this won't happen overnight. Wouldn't it make sense to pull together a list of doctors and offices that CAN accommodate patients with these needs and then they can say, "I am sorry, we can't see you, however, I have these 10 who can - where are you located? I will let you know which is the closest." Not a solution, but a bridge until we have a solution.

Our doctor will come to our home, when we can not get up the stairs to his office.  How many Boston doctors are willing to do that, if they aren't willing to buy the equipment. If they were the patient, they would soon see why accessability is so important, and not just for healthcare.

The gym where I work out had to completely close and fill in the popular hot tub because it would cost so much to make it available and accessible to the handicapped. In all my years at the club, I never saw ONE handicapped person at the gym, much less in the locker room. It was explained to us by the ownership that the ADA mandated accessibility, and it was too expensive to comply. So we all lose. I work for a physician's group of three surgeons. The overhead is unbelievable (they have so far held out to joining the hospital), and there are months where the practice is on the edge of closing. From what I hear, there are many other practices in the same situation. If the government is so hell-bent on making healthcare accessible to the handicapped, why not make tax breaks or grants accessible to those practices willing to make the accomodations? The docs are already forced to accept low reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid patients. You can't get blood out of a stone. Why should they be forced to take money out of their own pockets to accomodate low- or no-paying patients? Seriously, isn't this what the Church is about? Where are all the religious do-gooders in a real time of need? They should be lining up to help, instead of all the breast-beating and finger-pointing we all have to endure. Will restaurants be required to have wheelchair access, even if they're located on higher floors? Will a merchant be required to install an elevator in their 1800's building to allow access to their upper floor merchandise? What about markets? Should they be required to put all of their products, groceries, and produce no higher than 24" so the handicapped can have full access? Where is this going to stop?

Weak article. 83% percent of offices are accessible. What was the percentage 5, 10, or 23 years ago? We do seem to be doing much better here than in other parts of the country. 

If physicians can't be sensitive to the needs of the disabled why the heck did they go into medicine?  There are no excuses for this!  And stop crying about cost.  Physicians are supposed to be concerned with healing not with the bottom line.

My brother's best man (and my brother was HIS best man later on) was the late attorney Paul Hearn, one of the main authors of the Americans With Disabilities Act.  (He founded "Just One Chance", a pioneer employment agency for the disabled.  And he sat next to the President when the ADA was signed into law. )  Paul had "brittle bone disease" and used a wheelchair.

The thing that I got from knowing Paul was how amazingly unconcerned and unaware we able bodied are about the every day, simple conveniences WE have that a person who is not as able bodied does not have.  It is appalling.

We are really thoughtless.  It is horrible that we  don't have full access, for those who live with a disability, to transporation, doctor's and other offices many other venues.   Let alone proper employment opportunities.  Intelligent, educated people who live with a disability STILL have a hard time getting a job.

What grossly unfair headline. If 83% of *journalists* were able to meet this standard, I'm sure the headline would have focused on that overwhelming majority.

Just read this, please:  It is the obituary for Paul Hearne, one of the main writers of the ADA.  He was an attorney who had brittle bone disease and a close friend to my brother and our neighbor.  My brother, a 13 year old ham radio operator, met Paul, who never went to school (they didn't have a school for kids like him in the 1960's and early 70's), via this shared hobby and their friendship was close and life long.)  

Reading this you may understand better a different point of view.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/10/us/paul-g-hearne-48-affable-champion-of-disabled-dies.html

"he started the first legal services office for the disabled; ran Just One Break Inc., the nation's first private job placement agency for the disabled, from 1979 to 1989; served as director of the National Council on Disability, and had a hand in writing the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

His high school was geared to students with disabilities, but when he got to Hofstra University, where he would eventually earn a law degree, Mr. Hearne began to discover and chafe at the myriad little restrictions an unthinking society sometimes imposes on those who do not conform to the standard physical mold.

Mr. Hearne was determined not to be shut out of campus social life. Confronted by one of those Catch-22 policies -- disabled students restricted to first-floor dormitory rooms (so they could get out in case of fire) by a university with no first-floor dormitory rooms -- he organized a protest that succeeded in changing the policy and won him a second-floor room.

Despite that early success, Mr. Hearne did not decide to become a full-time advocate for the disabled until a legal-service agency he worked for in Brooklyn moved, with his co-workers' blessing, to an upper floor in a building without an elevator.

Incensed that people who knew and worked with him would be so oblivious to his plight, Mr. Hearne, who derived a grim measure of satisfaction from the fact that his co-workers had to carry him up to his office, decided to set the world straight.

In quick order he started a legal service for the disabled, wrote the first legal handbook on the rights of the disabled, became a consultant to major corporations seeking to employ the disabled and set out on the course that would take him to Washington in 1989."

One in 6 practices refused even to schedule an appointment.  I've had plenty of appointments that were scheduled, but even when I have asked ahead of time whether they had an exam table that I could use, I have often been denied basic medical services upon arrival.  Recently, at the brand-new Shapiro building at Boston Medical Center, I had to do a dermatology checkup in my wheelchair, because there was no available gurney for transferring to.  This is despite promises from Hospital officials that the very newly constructed Shapiro was fully accessible.

Many people have gone years without being weighed, women cannot get mammograms or gynecological exams, etc.  The right to access benefits everyone.  Just look how popular curb ramps are and elevators are and ramps are and captioning on restaurant TVs are, etc.

This article has touched the expectable raw nerve.  And, unfortunately, it probably can only happen with the anonymity provided by this type of setting.  The team of voices which are advocating for access for disabilities has, largely, won the war.  And they still push mightily for more ground.  But the victory has come at a profound cost.  As mentioned above, there are facilities closed to the many because they cannot afford to acccomodate the few.  There are endless examples of stupid decisions, all under the name of the ADA.  Functional and useful doors in public buildings locked because they are not accessible would be one example.  That's not to mention the endless discussion possible about parking, which has many facets.

If there is any call to examine the cost of those gains, that person is labeled heartless, as I was above.  Not so.  The extreme labeling belies the very exaggerated stance taken by the disability advocates.  The conversation has to head in the direction that sometimes, some people cannot do some things because of personal limitations.  That's not being heartless. That's simply not being excessively extreme.

As far as there being no room in the article to address the tax write-offs of retrofitting offices, that is a diversion.  It's still money spent.  The cost vs. the return on investment is something that would get any first year business student a failing grade if it were suggested as a business model.

Ok, Deborah Kotz, why didn't you entitle this article "Overwhelming Majority (83%) of Medical Specialists Provide Handicap Access." Why not praise Massachusetts for being one of the best states in the country for handicap access? Why have you chosen sensationalism over honest reporting? Medical practices and institutions are very sensitive to the needs of disabled individuals. Why not be honest in reporting on this? There is room for improvement, but there is no reason to paint this subject with a strongly disparaging and inaccurate headline. If you are going to criticize doctors, you ought to be a fair and honest journalist.

People have no idea how hard it is to navigate in a wheelchair. Harvard Medical School is one of the hardest campuses to roll around on, that's for sure. How about the dentist, too?

The article didn't say that all the offices were accessible just that they would schedule an appointment. What a patient finds when they get to the office is another story. I have deaf colleages who struggle with communication access to various offices. Access means more than ramps.