Your average family practice doctor is focusing on health care, that might be why, when you stop and think of all that needs 
to be covered with that 15 minute visit, so do you cut off part of the healthcare portion of the visit and education process to discuss the health plans? As a patient, I would much rather hear what the doctor has to say about my health, after all that is the purpose of the visit, not to see what health care plan the office might recommend!
Now there is a place perhaps where the staff in the office can offer some help here as they deal with the referrals, etc. all the time, but again it is not their responsibility to take this on as a full time project either, otherwise how do they find time to get in to the examining room when the physician needs them? Good question. Now the physician will know the difference obviously between insured and not insured and can work with patients for cash discounts, sure, but why in the world would we ever expect them to be an expert on health plans, heck nobody these days can figure them out, patients included after long lengthy research projects on the web.
Now the only way to even get a close handle on this is to incorporate more information into an electronic medical record so the physician, at the point of care, can do a quick search without leaving the chart to see this, or better yet the staff may have more time to do a quick look up to give the patient some general ideas, but specialists costs are hard for a family practice MD to relay to a patient, plus who knows if the patient just recently changed health plans, which then the whole picture changes.
Read up as much as you can ahead of time as a patient and do the best you can would be my advice. As patients and doctors we did not create this jungle and maize of confusion, the insurance companies did and unfortunately both patients and doctors have to work with the crazy system to get anything done as it adds on many hours of administrative time for all of us and all we want is to get our health taken care of. I think the idea of having a physician required to be on top of the insurance business is ludicrous if not insane. BD
Giridhar Mallya, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues surveyed 1,500 primary care physicians on their knowledge of consumer-directed health plans, their willingness to advise patients on cost considerations of such plans and their opinion of quality-care data in patient decision-making. In all, 49 percent of eligible physicians responded. It was common for physicians to be unaware of consumer-directed health plan cost considerations and limitations, even when their patients were covered by such plans, and less than 50 percent of respondents were prepared to offer advice to patients in the cost of specialist visits and hospital care, the study found. Information on quality-of-care from government and insurance company Web sites was confusing to patients and not trustworthy, the physicians indicated.
0 comments :
Post a Comment