The New Rat Pack

With changes in our national health care system, physicians have now taken the opportunity to seize the very moment they have been waiting for. The simple black framed Hippocratic Oath that hangs in most medical professional's waiting rooms has as much worth as that Kinkaid print you bought 6 years ago.

Medical professionals are not only refusing to take patients who carry insurances that provide a low payback but they are refusing patients based on physician to physician camaraderie. A show of blasphemy to this portion of the Hippocratic Oath once held in high regard:

TO RECKON all who have taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents and in the same spirit and dedication to impart knowledge of the art of medicine to others. I will continue with diligence to keep abreast of advances in medicine. I will treat without exception all who seek my ministrations, so long as the treatment of others is not compromised thereby, and I will seek the counsel of particularly skilled physicians where indicated for the benefit of my patient.

The continual drop in physicians accepting Medicare/Medicaid patients has been alarming. The cores of our nation, our seniors, are being denied treatment for lack of an adequate payback for services rendered. Physicians that once treated patients because they cared have now to turned to treating the patients that can provide them with the highest payback. In my previous article on Physician bullying I made a strong point regarding a patients right to choose a primary care physician that they felt, best suited their needs. That still holds true. What has changed is that this choice that was once an option has now, within the Town of Southington, Ct, become for some, a non-option.

A friend of mine recently endured injuries due to an accident. Her PC was away leaving an on call physician, Dr. P., to take charge of her care. During her course of treatment with Dr. P, she became aware that what she was receiving him was much more than what she'd received from her primary care, Dr. G. in the past. Elated that she'd felt she found a physician that truly cared by gone and beyond the required doctor/patient relationship, she opted to change her primary care to Dr. P.

A phone call later she had appointments set up for both she and husband the following month. During her initial contact she asked if Dr. P was taking new patients. The office told her was and she was good to go, so she thought. This past Friday she received a call from Dr.P's office informing her that her upcoming appointment, only 4 days away, would not take affect. Taken back by the statement, my dear friend queried as to the reason why. Dr. P's office told her that there was an office policy that, out of courtesy, Dr. P did not take patients from other in town doctors. The knowledge that she was previously being treated by Dr. G had come to light when they pulled her file. She was now without a primary care physician, yet, Dr. P's office told her they'd be happy to give her a list of other physicians in town. Totally baffled by the office response, and in tears, my friend called me.

I was perplexed. Although I'd never heard of such a policy it was not the policy, itself that I was questioning, but the reason for the implementation of the policy and what I found to be a contradiction in the practice of it. Having a welling urge to know, I told her I'd make a call to Dr. P's office to see if I got the same response and could find out more.

My conversation with an office staff member garnered the same response, yet I had to continue to ask questions.

1. Why the appointment made in the first place? Considering my friend was a prior patient of Dr. P and had a file in the office, why was no one aware prior to scheduling her appointment that she had been seeing Dr. G?

2. Why did Dr.P's office not ask the question, when the first call was made to schedule the appointment, who her current primary care was? This would have eliminated the appointment being made if the office policy was explained at that time.

3. The final and kicker to the entire scenario: Why is there an office policy in standing that extends courtesy to town physicians by not "stealing" their patients if a list of town doctors was available to give upon the rejected appointment? Call me silly but, if you will not take a patient as a courtesy to another doctor why would you give a list of doctors that would? Is that not a contradiction of your office ethics policy? And when did a patient's choice in their own PC become a matter of physician thief? It's not like Dr. P's office called to solicit her business.

After some persistence, the young lady on the other end of the phone was able to eventually tell me that Dr. G and Dr. P. had a close relationship. What we are seeing here is some serious misjudgment on the part of Dr.P's office policy and an assumption of refusal of treatment resulting from such a policy.

I'm all for camaraderie in and out of the business limelight. But when that camaraderie results in patient neglect I have a problem. As upstanding as Dr. P may feel his office policy it, in retrospect, he has managed to do nothing more than lose his own credibility as a respected town physician by refusing patient care.

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