Medical Consequence of a Business Bonus

Guest Post from Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.

Reality check: A new drug has emerged for your health condition, and after the doctor sample has run out, the prescription price tag is 25% of your monthly income; on discharge, your hospital doctor forces you to go to a “skilled nursing facility” instead of home, and you’re still sick; a letter arrives in the mail increasing your monthly health premiums and decreasing your coverage…again.

Does this make sense? It does when it is spelled “cents.”

Most industrialized countries around the world have minimized healthcare costs, yet still balance their budget. Why can’t our country do the same?

Below you will find my most recent posting with simple facts and possible solutions for the relentless healthcare debate. Should you have comments, feel free to do so at the link. If you find these thoughts worthy, pass them forward to your friends. But if you prefer not to receive my e-mails, let me know and I will remove you from my list.

Please voice your opinion.

Gene

Fighting Back When No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Dr. Richard Willner of the Center for Peer Review Justice writes in: 

This is the last letter I received from a client.  M is a 63 yo cardiologist living in XX.  This letter was ghosted by his boy, a lawyer in YY.   M had the “nerve” to question the billing of his patients.  As an employee, the billing is done by the billing department of the employer.   He should have benefited as he has earned more “credits”, as per the usual and customary contracts, insurance payers, etc. The Employer retaliated with a Suspension, Data Banking by the National Practitioner Data Bank,  and other actions.  

Under the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986, MDs do not have substantive due process rights.  All of these actions often result in a suspension at the state licensing board level, and other actions.  I specialize in “fixing” these type of cases.

The Cardiologist is making nice progress, and we are in the process of getting him significant employment in a hospital.

This letter followed:

Patients Suffer When the Government Plays Doctor

Guest Post by Gina Reghetti, D.O.

I believe that the United States’ Addiction problem is no accident. I believe it was created and supported via the USA’s government in an attempt to “dumb-down” our people, and easily control them through mandates and force. They wish to totally infiltrate medicine through their healthcare agendas, and knock doctors out of their own profession, and take medicine over entirely so that they can easily control peoples’ lives.

No other diseases, except Opioid Addictions are now regulated and controlled through the judicial system, the legal system, through “Drug-Courts” where judges over-rule the decisions of doctors when they treat patients that are suffering from Opioid Addictions. The judges are not helping the individuals, they are harming them by not following the advice of the patients’ doctors!

The Government, or the Judicial system, never request help from the treating physicians but always goes against what the doctors’ orders are. This tells me very clearly that their agendas are not to help individuals but are to seriously harm them, keep them labeled, and down, so that continued failure is in their future, not wellness, and success.

DPC: We will win by voting with our feet

Guest post from Michael Strickland, MD – http://letmydoctorpractice.org/

While I do think politics is of vital importance here, I don’t believe it is our ace card here.  We are vastly outnumbered when it comes to politics.  When Gina and I met with our Congressman, Brad Wenstrup, DPM, he said, “This is not going to be solved in Washington.  You (physicians) are going to have to fix this yourselves.”

Our ace in the hole here, which CANNOT be successfully opposed, if physicians can regain a semblance of the unity we had a few short decades ago (by focusing on one or more core professional issues where there is majority agreement) is simple:

Physicians control 80% of the healthcare dollar directly, through our orders (i.e. $2.4 Trillion/year, of $3 Trillion total, while receiving 8% of that dollar).

Physicians must take back control over definition of quality in medicine

Guest Post by Cynthia Marcotte Stamer, Esq.

Balanced billing is an important element, but only works if physicians recapture control over the quality question.   That’s why in addition to anything else physicians do, physicians must work to take back control over the right to define quality in medicine by controlling or beating back payer driven, cost motivated PQRS and other quality rankings that demonize physicians for practicing better medicine than what payers want to pay for both by demanding meaningful input to the design and quality standards and processes, pushing for reform that prevents payers and the government from misaligning and punishing physicians that put patients first, and other actions that ensure that patients put their confidence and control of care in the hands of physicians not payers or the government.   CMS recently extended the comment deadline on the 2016 PRQS Quality Measure Plan to March 1.  See CMS Seeks Public Comments on Draft Quality Measure Development Plan (MDP) by March 1, 2016 (1-29-2016). See here.  I urge everyone to review and submit meaningful comments on these proposed quality measures as whether or not you use to participate, they will be used to rate you.

Recertification: a test publisher’s attempt to take over authority in medicine

Guest post from Carlisle Holland, D.O.

The change to requiring recertification was demanded at the time by the younger generation of graduates, not the idea of those who had board certification for life. The cut off of requiring it was cited as unfair at the time, but the ‘higher standards’ were deemed worth the period of adjustment to such a change, as board certification was considered an intellectual achievement in itself, and worthy of the credit for knowing the information that well, a credential.

The recertification was a change in the intent of board certification itself and a perversion of its meaning. And it does not prove proficiency nor competency in a specialty to pass retesting every few years. What if they pass it and do not keep retaking it? Board Certified no more? And it confuses the meaning of Board Certified and changes it from a Lifetime Achievement like a Medical Degree, a CREDENTIAL, into a Temporary Pass, which is not an intellectual achievement, but a carrot-stick to force physicians to attend medical
meetings these organizations run.