Doctor Curmudgeon® You Are Only a Doctor, So You Don’t Count!

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By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman, is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist

It happened in the olden days when we were actually physically seeing patients in our office.

And, of course, it continues to occur in these times, when we do telemedicine visits

We are physicians.

We don’t have an actual product to exchange for which we are compensated. Nothing that we physically give to our patients (Prescriptions are no longer handed to the patient and it is rare, indeed, to have a sample available).

Nothing visible.

Nothing tangible to hand over.

Our experience does not count.

Our expertise has little value.

Our time spent in counseling, explaining, discussing, answering questions…. does not merit compensation.

So why should the patient give us a copay?

They pay for the insurance and that should be enough!!!

Few realize that the copay is really, truly, actually an important part of our compensation.

In my limited knowledge of the intricacies of health insurance, it appears that it can be a felony to waive copays and deductibles. And this can only be done when patients have a financial crisis.

The dilemma occurs when the patient does not have financial difficulties, but feels that if a physician spends thirty minutes or so, and they do not have a prescription for something…well…then the doctor has done nothing and should not be paid!

Of course, this is the case.

Physicians should not be reimbursed…they really don’t need to put food on the table.

Why should they recompensed for sitting around and talking?

Why should they be paid for phone calls?

Why pay them for filling out seemingly endless forms?

They get enough money from the insurance company.

Doctor Curmudgeon is confused.

She does not know how to deal with this. And she has decided that certain patients should simply be terminated from the office.

Let them trash her on every site they can find!!

Her heart is not hard and there are those who truly cannot afford copays and some who have no insurance and she has cared for them.

In these circumstances, her only wish is for those patients who have no insurance and are unable to pay for medical care…to simply be pleasant!

That is all.

Just treat her and her staff with kindness and respect.

Just be nice! And to those who are really nice she will share her chocolate.

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.

SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”

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