But this year, because of a new Medicare program, Curry has traveled a little more often.

In February, during one trip, he was told unexpectedly that he needed preapproval for the procedure. Then he went again a month or so later to get the injection, for a total of 10 hours on the road. His clinic wanted him to come in a third time, which they had never asked of him before. That appointment was “just to fill out a piece of paper to tell them how you feel again,” Curry said, so he hasn’t gone.

In January, Oklahoma became one of six states to begin a pilot program testing the use of preapprovals in traditional Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people 65 and older or with disabilities. Medicare had previously eschewed the practice — also known as prior authorization — which requires patients or someone on their medical team to seek insurance approval before proceeding with certain procedures, tests, and prescriptions.

Epidurals like Curry’s are among 13 medical services subject to the new program because the Trump administration says they’re prone to fraud or misuse. Powered by artificial intelligence, the program — called the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction Model, or WISeR — is intended to save the federal government money and protect patients from potentially unsafe or unneeded care.

Yet early reviews from Oklahoma and the other pilot states — Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas, and Washington — suggest WISeR’s rollout has not been smooth. Patients, doctors, and other healthcare professionals who spoke with KFF Health News say the effort has created confusion, errors, long wait times, and stress. Some described the rollout as “horrendous” and say people enrolled in Medicare in the pilot states are now getting ensnared in the same red tape as those with private insurance.

One key concern is that it all happened too hastily. WISeR was announced in June 2025 and launched in mid-January.

That was “quicker than normal” for the federal government, said Todd Baker, who recently stepped down as CEO of the Ohio State Medical Association. Doctors “just sort of had to figure it out,” added Jeb Shepard, director of policy at the Washington State Medical Association.

Government contractors have also acknowledged the rapid pace. “We’ve had an aggressive rollout from the time of being notified to going live,” said Jeremy Friese, CEO of Humata Health, the vendor for Oklahoma. Tech executives servicing other states have said they were still adding features to their products in the spring.

Abe Sutton, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which is administering the program, didn’t comment on the rollout schedule. But he said in a statement that the goal of these reforms is to ensure that prior authorization is efficient, fast, and streamlined.

“The model aims to reduce inappropriate care without delaying appropriate care,” he said.

Mehmet Oz, the leader of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, told NewsNation in December that they were “rolling out some prior authorization on abused practices.”

“The purpose of these is not to deny care,” Oz continued. “It’s to make sure you get the care you need and deserve, not the care some unscrupulous doctor wants to use on you.”

Medicare has struggled in recent years with suspected fraud associated with particular services. The Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general warned in September that the program’s spending on skin substitutes, for example, had surged nearly 700% over two years, raising “major concerns about fraud, waste, and abuse.” Skin substitutes are among the 13 therapies currently subject to review under WISeR.

The program also imposes prior authorization requirements for kyphoplasty, a surgery for spinal fractures, which a report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission flagged as overused.

Sutton acknowledged, however, that “the percentage of providers committing waste, fraud, and abuse is small.”

Consumers and clinicians largely detest prior authorization. Even as federal health officials test the process for Medicare, the Trump administration is trying to scale it back for those with private insurance. According to a KFF poll conducted in January, 69% of insured adults consider prior authorization a burden for care.

Through WISeR, doctors and their staff log in to online portals to submit medical records that justify the procedures. Using artificial intelligence, the systems quickly approve applications that meet the program’s criteria, Friese, Humata’s chief executive, told KFF Health News. He said there is an “immediate yes” in 88% of cases for which clinical data supports an approval.

CMS has touted the process as one in which decisions are returned within 72 hours. After that, clinicians receive a “universal tracking number,” which allows them to schedule the procedure and get paid. In practice, however, participants say the process is anything but easy.

The University of Washington’s medical system alone had nearly 100 patients waiting earlier this year for epidural injections due to WISeR-related delays, according to an April report from the office of U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) that drew on hospital association data. “Now, patients are subject to delays or denials which did not exist prior to the WISeR Model,” the report said.

Curry, the Oklahoma cattle farmer, said he might go to Kansas for future treatments to avoid the approval process. Dorota Gribbin, a New Jersey-based physical medicine and rehabilitation physician, said that by the time authorization came for one of her patients who needed a back pain procedure, the patient had gone to the hospital for more expensive care.

Jennifer Valle, a precertification and insurance supervisor at Clinical Radiology of Oklahoma, said when it comes to kyphoplasties, there has been a lot of “nitpicking” from reviewers. Other times, information her practice provides to CMS gets overlooked, she said, and reviewers ask for imaging that’s already in the file.

Claims with no problems are supposed to be paid within 15 days, said James Webb, a musculoskeletal radiologist in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who has also been frustrated by the prior approval and reimbursement process for kyphoplasties. “Six- to eight-week delays is what we’ve been seeing,” he said.

“It’s been horrendous,” said Jerry Sobel, a Phoenix-area pain management doctor. “Right from the beginning, there seemed to be no organization.” Sobel said that as of May, he hadn’t gotten paid by Medicare for nine epidurals.

“We continuously monitor operations and work closely with stakeholders to address questions and improve the provider experience,” said Sundar Subramanian, the CEO of Zyter, which has the contract for Arizona.

During an April webinar, another Zyter executive acknowledged a large backlog in payments stretching to January. Those backlogs “are currently being resolved,” Medicare’s Sutton said, without providing further detail.

When asked about other issues — including what doctors suspect are AI-driven errors — Medicare’s Sutton said the agency appreciates “feedback on provider experience.” It will be used “to help providers better understand WISeR processes,” he said.

Although CMS vendors say humans make the final decisions on approvals, doctors and their staffs believe artificial intelligence is playing a large role in the process and that denials are sometimes the result of AI hallucinations that garble or make up information.

One Arizona doctor, who wasn’t authorized by his practice to speak, recalled a denial saying his patient wasn’t eligible for procedures in the thoracic region, or mid-back. The patient needed an injection to the neck. Webb, the Oklahoma radiologist, documented four times that a patient lacked numbness, and yet his WISeR application was still denied, citing numbness, which, in the reviewer’s interpretation, would rule out the spinal surgery procedure.

Friese, Humata’s CEO, said he hasn’t heard about any AI hallucinations.

The process is also raising government costs. With more rejections, more appeals are being filed with Medicare’s administrative contractors. The government pays the contractors to handle the appeals, and Medicare’s Sutton acknowledged that the agency has “accounted for potential changes in the volume of Medicare appeals because of the WISeR program and its associated costs.”

Eighty-four percent of commercial insurers already use AI tools, according to a survey released in 2025 by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, though they have consistently said AI isn’t used to deny prior authorization requests.

Its use in Medicare risks introducing friction and frustration into the program — and piling costs onto its beneficiaries. Prior authorization saves money for insurers partly by making patients pay a price in wait times and inconvenience, said Miranda Yaver, a University of Pittsburgh health policy researcher studying the technique.

“People will end up getting ensnared in a lot of red tape, having to be on hold, and getting rerouted,” she said. She often wonders whether prior authorization simply shifts costs to patients and doctors, rather than saving them.

Some doctors involved in Medicare’s prior authorization experiment believe it will inevitably expand beyond a few services officials in Washington consider fraud-prone.

“Everybody knows that if this pilot project works, it will be prior auth for basically all procedures,” said Mary Clarke, a family practice physician in Stillwater, Oklahoma. “If they can show that they can save money, then that’s going to be extrapolated and rolled out to other procedures and multiple other things in other states.”

When asked whether CMS is considering expansion of its prior authorization pilot, Sutton said in his statement that there are “currently no changes” considered for the list of services subject to the WISeR program, “but CMS continues to assess whether any changes are warranted.”

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In modern America, “the bread” has changed. It is no longer found in a Parisian bakery but in a community health center, a pharmacy, or a hospital admissions office. It is insulin, chemotherapy, biologics and mental health care. Access to these essentials increasingly depends not only on medical need but also on administrative thresholds, shifting eligibility rules, and delay mechanisms that quietly determine who waits, who deteriorates, and who absorbs financial collapse as collateral damage.

When Illness Becomes Economic Collapse

Medical debt has become the most visible expression of this misalignment. More than 100 million Americans now carry health-related debt, much of it incurred despite having health insurance. For millions of Americans, a single diagnosis can be enough to destabilize their household finances permanently. Medical debt damages credit, constrains housing and determines employment options. It fuels chronic stress that contributes to poorer health outcomes. It punishes people not for recklessness, but for uninvited illness.

The consequences extend well beyond ledgers. Individuals carrying medical debt are significantly more likely to delay or avoid needed care, skip prescriptions or postpone follow-up visits. Families report cutting back on food, utilities or rent to manage medical bills. In this way, illness becomes an economic accelerant, pushing people already close to the edge into deeper instability. Survival may be possible, but recovery, both financially, emotionally, and psychologically, becomes elusive.

For patients with serious illnesses such as cancer, autoimmune disease, or rare conditions, the stakes are far higher. Financial toxicity has been associated with increased mortality among cancer patients, as out-of-pocket costs lead individuals to delay treatment or abandon therapy altogether. This occurs at the same time that medical innovation has never been more promising. Targeted therapies, biologics, and personalized medicine are extending life and improving quality of life. The contradiction is stark: scientific progress accelerates while access narrows.

How Administration Became a Barrier to Care

At the center of this contradiction sits prior authorization. Originally intended as a utilization management tool, it has evolved into a pervasive barrier to timely care. Physicians report that prior authorization routinely delays necessary treatment and consumes hours of clinical time, while patients wait often in pain, sometimes in medical crisis. In oncology, delays can mean missed treatment windows. In neurology, they can mean needless pain or irreversible decline. In mental health, they can mean crisis escalation and hospitalization.

Denial rarely arrives as a clear refusal. More often, whether intentional or not, care is slowed until the patient deteriorates, disengages, or pays out of pocket. The system follows the rule, but the consequence is the weight that the patient carries. What was designed as stewardship increasingly functions as deterrence, too often transferring the burden of cost control to those least equipped to carry it.

Public programs meant to stabilize access have not been immune to this dynamic. Medicaid and Medicare, established as pillars of the American safety net in 1964, now operate amid growing instability. Eligibility thresholds are a moving target. Redetermination processes remove coverage for administrative reasons, rather than due to changes in need. Patients in active treatment lose coverage mid-course, forcing physicians to scramble and patients to panic. Coverage churn disrupts care and erodes trust, encouraging people to delay engagement with a system that is no longer structured to protect them when they are most vulnerable.

Taken together, medical debt, administrative delay, and coverage instability are not isolated policy failures but a systemic pattern. The modern sick-care system excels at episodic intervention but struggles with continuity, predictability, and lived experience. It measures success in transactions rather than trajectories, focusing on efficiency rather than consequences. Innovation thrives, while access to these medicines frays.

Violence is Never Justified

Hugo warned of where this leads. When systems feel unreachable, when appeals are endless and context is stripped away, frustration hardens into despair—the search for bread. Despair does not always erupt visibly. More often, people delay care not because they are indifferent to their health, but because they are afraid of what seeking care will cost them financially and emotionally.

Violence is never justified. The murder of health insurance executive Brian Thompson must be condemned without qualification. It is a human tragedy, not a symbol, and should never be rationalized. At the same time, refusing to examine the conditions that fuel public rage that applaud the killer is a warning sign about how people experience health care as an institution that governs life-and-death decisions while feeling increasingly inaccessible and unaccountable.

In Les Misérables, bread was enough to keep Jean Valjean’s family alive, but it was the weight of rigid systems that nearly broke him. That distinction matters today. When access to health care is treated as something to be rationed through delay, instability, and administrative friction, survival may still be possible, but long-term stability is put at risk. Medical debt, coverage churn, and seemingly weaponized delays do not merely inconvenience patients; they reshape how people relate to illness, the government, and companies, and allocate care.

The path forward does not begin with sanctifying health care, nor with vilifying those who work within it. It starts with recalibration. Administrative tools must serve care rather than obstruct it. Eligibility for public programs must offer predictability, not whiplash. Access must be treated as infrastructure, something that must function under stress, not a privilege rationed through complexity. America’s health-care story is still being written. Its outcome will not be determined solely by innovation or cost control, but by whether systems are designed to work when people are most vuln

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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Facing an ultracompetitive market in one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, UF Health is trying a new way to attract patients: a combination emergency room and urgent care center.

In the past year and a half, UF Health and a private equity-backed company, Intuitive Health, have opened three centers that offer both types of care 24/7 so patients don’t have to decide which facility they need.

Instead, doctors there decide whether it’s urgent or emergency care —the health system bills accordingly — and inform the patient of their decision at the time of the service.

“Most of the time you do not realize where you should go — to an urgent care or an ER — and that triage decision you make can have dramatic economic repercussions,” said Steven Wylie, associate vice president for planning and business development at UF Health Jacksonville. About 70% of patients at its facilities are billed at urgent care rates, Wylie said.

Emergency care is almost always more expensive than urgent care. For patients who might otherwise show up at the ER with an urgent care-level problem — a small cut that requires stitches or an infection treatable with antibiotics — the savings could be hundreds or thousands of dollars.

While no research has been conducted on this new hybrid model, consumer advocates worry hospitals are more likely to route patients to costlier ER-level care whenever possible.

For instance, some services that trigger higher-priced, ER-level care at UF Health’s facilities — such as blood work and ultrasounds — can be obtained at some urgent care centers.

“That sounds crazy, that a blood test can trigger an ER fee, which can cost thousands of dollars,” said Cynthia Fisher, founder and chair of PatientRightsAdvocate.org, a patient advocacy organization.

For UF Health, the hybrid centers can increase profits because they help attract patients. Those patient visits can lead to more revenue through diagnostic testing and referrals for specialists or inpatient care.

Offering less expensive urgent care around-the-clock, the hybrid facilities stand out in an industry known for its aggressive billing practices.

On a recent visit to one of UF Health’s facilities about 15 miles southeast of downtown, several patients said in interviews that they sought a short wait for care. None had sat in the waiting room more than five minutes.

“Sometimes urgent care sends you to the ER, so here you can get everything,” said Andrea Cruz, 24, who was pregnant and came in for shortness of breath. Cruz said she was being treated as an ER patient because she needed blood tests and monitoring.

“It’s good to have a place like this that can treat you no matter what,” said Penny Wilding, 91, who said she has no regular physician and was being evaluated for a likely urinary tract infection.

UF Health is one of about a dozen health systems in 10 states partnering with Intuitive Health to set up and run hybrid ER-urgent care facilities. More are in the works; VHC Health, a large hospital in Arlington, Virginia, plans to start building one this year.

Intuitive Health was established in 2008 by three emergency physicians. For several years the company ran independent combination ER-urgent care centers in Texas.

Then Altamont Capital Partners, a multibillion-dollar private equity firm based in Palo Alto, California, bought a majority stake in Intuitive in 2014.

Soon after, the company began partnering with hospitals to open facilities in states including Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, and Delaware. Under their agreements, the hospitals handle medical staff and billing while Intuitive manages administrative functions — including initial efforts to collect payment, including checking insurance and taking copays — and nonclinical staff, said Thom Herrmann, CEO of Intuitive Health.

Herrmann said hospitals have become more interested in the concept as Medicare and other insurers pay for value instead of just a fee for each service. That means hospitals have an incentive to find ways to treat patients for less.

And Intuitive has a strong incentive to partner with hospitals, said Christine Monahan, an assistant research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University: Facilities licensed as freestanding emergency rooms — as Intuitive’s are — must be affiliated with hospitals to be covered by Medicare.

At the combo facilities, emergency room specialists determine whether to bill for higher-priced ER or lower-priced urgent care after patients undergo a medical screening. They compare the care needed against a list of criteria that trigger emergency-level care and bills, such as the patient requiring IV fluids or cardiac monitoring.

Inside its combo facilities, UF posts a sign listing some of the urgent care services it offers, including treatment for ear infections, sprains, and minor wounds. When its doctors determine ER-level care is necessary, UF requires patients to sign a form acknowledging they will be billed for an ER visit.

Patients who opt out of ER care at that time are charged a triage fee. UF would not disclose the amount of the fee, saying it varies.

UF officials say patients pay only for the level of care they need. Its centers accept most insurance plans, including Medicare, which covers people older than 65 and those with disabilities, and Medicaid, the program for low-income people.

But there are important caveats, said Fisher, the patient advocate.

Patients who pay cash for urgent care at UF’s hybrid centers are charged an “all-inclusive” $250 fee, whether they need an X-ray or a rapid strep test, to name two such services, or both.

But if they use insurance, patients may have higher cost sharing if their health plan is charged more than it would pay for stand-alone urgent care, she said.

Also, federal surprise billing protections that shield patients in an ER don’t extend to urgent care centers, Fisher said.

Herrmann said Intuitive’s facilities charge commercial insurers for urgent care the same as if they provided only urgent care. But Medicare may pay more.

While urgent care has long been intended for minor injuries and illnesses and ERs are supposed to be for life- or health-threatening conditions, the two models have melded in recent years. Urgent care clinics have increased the scope of injuries and conditions they can treat, while hospitals have taken to advertising ER wait times on highway billboards to attract patients.

Intuitive is credited with pioneering hybrid ER-urgent care, though its facilities are not the only ones with both “emergency” and “urgent care” on their signs. Such branding can sometimes confuse patients.

While Intuitive’s hybrid facilities offer some price transparency, providers have the upper hand on cost, said Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University in Texas. “Patients are at the mercy of what the hospital tells them,” she said.

But Daniel Marthey, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Texas A&M University, said the facilities can help patients find a lower-cost option for care by avoiding steep ER bills when they need only urgent-level care. “This is a potentially good thing for patients,” he said.

Marthey said hospitals may be investing in hybrid facilities to make up for lost revenue after federal surprise medical billing protections took effect in 2022 and restricted what hospitals could charge patients treated by out-of-network providers, particularly in emergencies.

“Basically, they are just competing for market share,” Marthey said.

UF Health has placed its new facilities in suburban areas near freestanding ERs owned by competitors HCA Healthcare and Ascension rather than near its downtown hospital in Jacksonville. It is also building a fourth facility, near The Villages, a large retirement community more than 100 miles south.

“This has been more of an offensive move to expand our market reach and go into suburban markets,” Wylie said.

Though the three centers are not state-approved to care for trauma patients, doctors there said they can handle almost any emergency, including heart attacks and strokes. Patients needing hospitalization are taken by ambulance to the UF hospital about 20 minutes away. If they need to follow up with a specialist, they’re referred to a UF physician.

“If you fall and sprain your leg and need an X-ray and crutches, you can come here and get charged urgent care,” said Justin Nippert, medical director of two of UF’s combo centers. “But if you break your ankle and need it put back in place it can get treated here, too. It’s a one-stop shop.”

Author: Phil Galewitz: pgalewitz@kff.org, @philgalewitz

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Judith Sullivan was recovering from major surgery at a Connecticut nursing home in March when she got surprising news from her Medicare Advantage plan: It would no longer pay for her care because she was well enough to go home.

At the time, she could not walk more than a few feet, even with assistance — let alone manage the stairs to her front door, she said. She still needed help using a colostomy bag following major surgery.

“How could they make a decision like that without ever coming and seeing me?” said Sullivan, 76. “I still couldn’t walk without one physical therapist behind me and another next to me. Were they all coming home with me?”

UnitedHealthcare — the nation’s largest health insurance company, which provides Sullivan’s Medicare Advantage plan — doesn’t have a crystal ball. It does have naviHealth, a care management company bought by UHC’s sister company, Optum, in 2020. Both are part of UnitedHealth Group. NaviHealth analyzes data to help UHC and other insurance companies make coverage decisions.

Its proprietary “nH Predict” tool sifts through millions of medical records to match patients with similar diagnoses and characteristics, including age, preexisting health conditions, and other factors. Based on these comparisons, an algorithm anticipates what kind of care a specific patient will need and for how long.

But patients, providers, and patient advocates in several states said they have noticed a suspicious coincidence: The tool often predicts a patient’s date of discharge, which coincides with the date their insurer cuts off coverage, even if the patient needs further treatment that government-run Medicare would provide.

“When an algorithm does not fully consider a patient’s needs, there’s a glaring mismatch,” said Rajeev Kumar, a physician and the president-elect of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents long-term care practitioners. “That’s where human intervention comes in.”

The federal government will try to even the playing field next year, when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services begins restricting how Medicare Advantage plans use predictive technology tools to make some coverage decisions.

Medicare Advantage plans, an alternative to the government-run, original Medicare program, are operated by private insurance companies. About half the people eligible for full Medicare benefits are enrolled in the private plans, attracted by their lower costs and enhanced benefits like dental care, hearing aids, and a host of nonmedical extras like transportation and home-delivered meals.

Insurers receive a monthly payment from the federal government for each enrollee, regardless of how much care they need. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general, this arrangement raises “the potential incentive for insurers to deny access to services and payment in an attempt to increase profits.” Nursing home care has been among the most frequently denied services by the private plans — something original Medicare likely would cover, investigators found.

After UHC cut off her nursing home coverage, Sullivan’s medical team agreed with her that she wasn’t ready to go home and provided an additional 18 days of treatment. Her bill came to $10,406.36.

Beyond her mobility problems, “she also had a surgical wound that needed daily dressing changes” when UHC stopped paying for her nursing home care, said Debra Samorajczyk, a registered nurse and the administrator at the Bishop Wicke Health and Rehabilitation Center, the facility that treated Sullivan.

Sullivan’s coverage denial notice and nH Predict report did not mention wound care or her inability to climb stairs. Original Medicare would have most likely covered her continued care, said Samorajczyk.

Sullivan appealed twice but lost. Her next appeal was heard by an administrative law judge, who holds a courtroom-style hearing usually by phone or video link, in which all sides can provide testimony. UHC declined to send a representative, but the judge nonetheless sided with the company. Sullivan is considering whether to appeal to the next level, the Medicare Appeals Council, and the last step before the case can be heard in federal court.

Sullivan’s experience is not unique. In February, Ken Drost’s Medicare Advantage plan, provided by Security Health Plan of Wisconsin, wanted to cut his coverage at a Wisconsin nursing home after 16 days, the same number of days naviHealth predicted was necessary. But Drost, 87, who was recovering from hip surgery, needed help getting out of bed and walking. He stayed at the nursing home for an additional week, at a cost of $2,624.

After he appealed twice and lost, his hearing on his third appeal was about to begin when his insurer agreed to pay his bill, said his lawyer, Christine Huberty, supervising attorney at the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources Elder Law & Advocacy Center in Madison.

“Advantage plans routinely cut patients’ stays short in nursing homes,” she said, including Humana, Aetna, Security Health Plan, and UnitedHealthcare. “In all cases, we see their treating medical providers disagree with the denials.”

UnitedHealthcare and naviHealth declined requests for interviews and did not answer detailed questions about why Sullivan’s nursing home coverage was cut short over the objections of her medical team.

Aaron Albright, a naviHealth spokesperson, said in a statement that the nH Predict algorithm is not used to make coverage decisions and instead is intended “to help the member and facility develop personalized post-acute care discharge planning.” Length-of-stay predictions “are estimates only.”

However, naviHealth’s website boasts about saving plans money by restricting care. The company’s “predictive technology and decision support platform” ensures that “patients can enjoy more days at home, and healthcare providers and health plans can significantly reduce costs specific to unnecessary care and readmissions.”

New federal rules for Medicare Advantage plans beginning in January will rein in their use of algorithms in coverage decisions. Insurance companies using such tools will be expected to “ensure that they are making medical necessity determinations based on the circumstances of the specific individual,” the requirements say, “as opposed to using an algorithm or software that doesn’t account for an individual’s circumstances.”

The CMS-required notices nursing home residents receive now when a plan cuts short their coverage can be oddly similar while lacking details about a particular resident. Sullivan’s notice from UHC contains some identical text to the one Drost received from his Wisconsin plan. Both say, for example, that the plan’s medical director reviewed their cases, without providing the director’s name or medical specialty. Both omit any mention of their health conditions that make managing at home difficult, if not impossible.

The tools must still follow Medicare coverage criteria and cannot deny benefits that original Medicare covers. If insurers believe the criteria are too vague, plans can base algorithms on their own criteria, as long as they disclose the medical evidence supporting the algorithms.

And before denying coverage considered not medically necessary, another change requires that a coverage denial “must be reviewed by a physician or other appropriate health care professional with expertise in the field of medicine or health care that is appropriate for the service at issue.”

Jennifer Kochiss, a social worker at Bishop Wicke who helps residents file insurance appeals, said patients and providers have no say in whether the doctor reviewing a case has experience with the client’s diagnosis. The new requirement will close “a big hole,” she said.

The leading MA plans oppose the changes in comments submitted to CMS. Tim Noel, UHC’s CEO for Medicare and retirement, said MA plans’ ability to manage beneficiaries’ care is necessary “to ensure access to high-quality safe care and maintain high member satisfaction while appropriately managing costs.”

Restricting “utilization management tools would markedly deviate from Congress’ intent in creating Medicare managed care because they substantially limit MA plans’ ability to actually manage care,” he said.

In a statement, UHC spokesperson Heather Soule said the company’s current practices are “consistent” with the new rules. “Medical directors or other appropriate clinical personnel, not technology tools, make all final adverse medical necessity determinations” before coverage is denied or cut short. However, these medical professionals work for UHC and usually do not examine patients. Other insurance companies follow the same practice.

David Lipschutz, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, is concerned about how CMS will enforce the rules since it doesn’t mention specific penalties for violations.

CMS’ deputy administrator and director of the Medicare program, Meena Seshamani, said that the agency will conduct audits to verify compliance with the new requirements, and “will consider issuing an enforcement action, such as a civil money penalty or an enrollment suspension, for the non-compliance.”

Although Sullivan stayed at Bishop Wicke after UHC stopped paying, she said another resident went home when her MA plan wouldn’t pay anymore. After two days at home, the woman fell, and an ambulance took her to the hospital, Sullivan said. “She was back in the nursing home again because they put her out before she was ready.”

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In order to make that money, however, it takes literally decades of schooling and many years of training, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. In order to become a specialist, it can take more than half a decade of training to get there. It is not an easy path.

And, it is also true that primary care physicians are among the least paid of the profession. Primary care physicians are the bulwark of the healthcare system, the load bearing walls of our field, and it is truly unfortunate that, sometimes, they can make less than many other professionals.

Having said all of that, it is also true that the latest rounds of physician pay cuts announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are quite distressing and truly unsustainable.

They state that these cuts are mandated by federal law:

By factors specified in law, overall payment rates under the PFS are proposed to be reduced by 1.25% in CY 2024 compared to CY 2023. CMS is also proposing significant increases in payment for primary care and other kinds of direct patient care.

The proposed CY 2024 PFS conversion factor is $32.75, a decrease of $1.14 (or 3.34%) from the current CY 2023 conversion factor of $33.89.

The conversion factor is multiplied by relative value units, which quantify how much “work” something a physician does, to arrive at a payment from CMS. And, CMS only pays 80% of that rate, the rest being paid by supplemental insurance (if a patient has it).

Immediately, physician groups decried the cuts:

“While the ACR [American College of Rheumatology] appreciates CMS’ continued recognition of the value of complex care provided by rheumatologists and other cognitive care specialists … we are gravely concerned that the proposed rule’s physician payment cuts contained in CMS’ conversion factor would add to physicians’ uncertainty about their continued ability to provide the highest quality of care to Medicare patients,” ACR president Douglas White, MD, PhD, said in a statement.

The President of the American Medical Association also weighed in with a statement, saying:

When adjusted for inflation, Medicare physician payment already has effectively declined 26% from 2001 to 2023 before additional inflation and these cuts are factored in. Physicians are one of the only providers without an automatic inflationary increase … Physicians need relief from this unsustainable journey.

Anders Gilberg, MGA, senior vice president for government affairs at the Medical Group Management Association chimed in as well:

The proposed 2024 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) raises significant concerns for medical groups related to its 3.4% reduction to the conversion factor, which further increases the gap between physician practice expenses and Medicare reimbursement rates. Medicare already largely fails to cover the cost of furnishing care to beneficiaries, and the proposed cut to the 2024 conversion factor compounds the problem.

This is the key to understanding why physicians are upset about these cuts. It is not about greedy physicians. It’s not about a doctor previously earning $400,000 and now earning $388,000.

It is about the costs of running a practice. When adjusted for inflation, physician reimbursement has declined significantly, as the AMA correctly pointed out. But, the costs of running a physician practice has not decreased by the same amount. They have, in fact, dramatically increased: there has been 7% inflation in healthcare labor costs, and now CMS answers this increase in costs with another 3% payment cut. This math is not sustainable.

I used to be a partner in a small private practice. Yes, I earned a comfortable living. But, it costed a lot of money to keep the practice open: the salary of the office staff; the rent of the office space; the utilities; office supplies; among many other costs. Those costs didn’t go down. Ever.

Yet, our reimbursement from CMS and other payers did. Eventually, if the costs of running a practice exceed its income, the practice closes. Or, they stop taking Medicare because the reimbursement was not enough to cover the costs.

In very large practices, there are other costs – such as interest on loans to cover payroll – have increased dramatically in the past few years. With every cut in reimbursement, it makes staying in business that much more difficult.

This is what physician groups mean when they say these payment cuts by CMS threaten access to care for seniors. If practices close their doors because the math is not sustainable, then that means less doctors are available to care for seniors. There is already a shortage of physicians, especially in rural areas, and these payment cuts could make it worse by making it impossible to run a practice.

Now, it is great that CMS is paying primary care physicians more. It is high time they get the proper reimbursement they deserve. What I don’t understand is why the law forces CMS to pay PCPs more by taking the money from other physicians, most notably specialists. This makes no sense to me.

“Well,” some may say, “specialists make too much money anyway.” That’s a non-argument. The whole formula under federal law needs to be changed for something much more sustainable for everyone.

Physicians can’t just keep working harder for less reimbursement. That is part of what is driving physicians to burn out and leave the profession. How does this help our patients? And, no one tells a plumber, after he or she fixed your leaky shower or faucet, “Well, your bill is $200, but I’m only going to pay you $120.”

Yet, that’s what happens to physicians all the time, and the math is not sustainable. CMS spends only 1 out of every 5 dollars on physician and clinical services. It is not right to keep cutting physician reimbursement to reduce healthcare spending. There has to be a better way.

The post The Unsustainable Math of Medicare Physician Reimbursement Cuts appeared first on Medika Life.

Just off the historic U.S. Route 66 in eastern New Mexico, a 10-bed hospital has for decades provided emergency care for a steady flow of people injured in car crashes and ranching accidents.

It also has served as a close-to-home option for the occasional overnight patient, usually older residents with pneumonia or heart trouble. It’s the only hospital for the more than 4,500 people living on a swath of 3,000 square miles of high plains and lakes east of Albuquerque.

“We want to be the facility that saves lives,” said Christina Campos, administrator of Guadalupe County Hospital in Santa Rosa. Its leaders have no desire to grow or be a big, profitable business, she said.

But even with a tax levy to help support the medical outpost, the facility lost more than $1 million in the past six months, Campos said: “For years, we’ve been anticipating kind of our own demise, praying that a program would come along and make us sustainable.”

Guadalupe is one of the nation’s first to start the process of converting into a Rural Emergency Hospital. The designation was created as part of the first new federal payment program launched by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for rural providers in 25 years. And though it is not expected to be a permanent solution to pressures facing rural America, policymakers and hospital operators alike hope it will slow the financial hemorrhage that continues to shutter those communities’ hospitals.

More than 140 rural hospitals have closed nationwide since 2010, and health policy watchers aren’t sure how many of the more than 1,700 rural facilities eligible for the new designation will apply. CMS officials said late last month that seven have already filed applications. Dr. Lee Fleisher, director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality at CMS, said how long it will take to review the applications will vary. The agency declined to provide the names or locations of hospitals seeking the designation.

Facilities that convert will get a 5% increase in Medicare payments as well as an average annual facility fee payment of about $3.2 million in exchange for giving up their expensive inpatient beds and focusing solely on emergency and outpatient care. Rural hospitals with no more than 50 beds that closed after the law passed on Dec. 27, 2020, are eligible to apply for the new payment model if they reopen.

The new program “strikes me as the first time we are saying, you know, maybe we can just take the beds away,” said Dr. Paula Chatterjee, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Outpatient and emergency visits already make up about 66% of Medicare payments for rural hospitals that are eligible to convert, according to Chatterjee’s recent research.

Still, she found that many would likely need to scale up some outpatient services, such as telehealth and substance use care. Even then the payment model might not be able to shift the “foundational pressures” of declining, aging, and sicker populations that are making it hard to deliver care in rural America, she said.

“This feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” Chatterjee said.

More than 50 hospitals and other organizations have expressed interest in the rural emergency designation, said Janice Walters, chief operating officer of programs for the Rural Health Redesign Center, which has a federal grant to provide technical assistance to facilities interested in converting.

Most hospitals “are still trying to figure out, ‘Is the math going to work?’” Walters said.

Those showing immediate interest are very small, with three or fewer patients staying overnight any given day, and, generally, they long ago gave up maternity care to save on expenses. The federal law will need to be amended to help larger rural hospitals with more overnight stays, said Brock Slabach, chief operations officer for the National Rural Health Association.

“It’s enough for now,” Slabach said. “But is it going to be enough for the long term? I don’t think so.” Top priorities for the group include adding the ability for hospitals to participate in a federal drug discount program and allowing for longer patient stays.

At Stillwater Medical in Oklahoma, Chief Administrative Officer Steven Taylor said the switch already makes sense for two of the system’s smaller hospitals that “have struggled financially.” The small regional health system’s outpost in Perry, which rarely has more than two inpatients a day, has already filed an application, and its facility in Blackwell will likely do so soon, he said.

Keeping emergency services “is the most important thing” for the small communities, he said. The new model requires a 24-hour emergency department and a clinician on call. It also caps the average length of patient stays at 24 hours — which Taylor said is not a problem. One patient may need to be watched for 12 hours for chest pain while another, with pneumonia, may need to stay for 36 hours, but that will average out to less than 24 hours for the year, he said.

Plus, he said, anybody who needs more intense care can be transferred to their regional hospital in Stillwater. Oklahoma, like other states, is working to update state laws for licensing or regulations to ensure hospitals can be credentialed with the rural emergency designation quickly.

John Henderson, president and chief executive of the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals, agreed with other speakers at the National Rural Health Association’s February policy conference in Washington, D.C. The new rule “could be a relief valve” for very small rural hospitals, he said. A two-bed facility in Crosbyton confirmed for Henderson earlier that day that it was the first in Texas to be approved for the new payment mechanism.

Henderson said he knew of several more of the state’s 158 rural hospitals that are applying or have already applied, and others are considering it: “These are the folks that are just hanging on.”

Dr. Denise Brown, CEO of virtual care provider Fident, spoke up from the front row during Henderson’s presentation. Her company uses telehealth so doctors and other clinicians can work virtually with multiple hospitals in different states. Brown said she was concerned that hospitals that convert won’t have enough ambulances available to transport or a place to send sicker patients, especially if they aren’t part of a larger health system.

Heads began to nod throughout the crowded room. Many rural hospitals needed every bed they had during the worst of the covid-19 pandemic, and to give up those beds now seems counterintuitive.

Those same rural hospitals often find that larger facilities refuse to take their patients who need specialized care, Brown said.

“How do I know that I can guarantee somebody a bed?” Brown said, adding that she prefers rural hospitals keep patients longer. How would she explain to concerned family members that their loved one was “two or three hours from home”?

The post Struggle to Survive, the First Rural Hospitals Line Up for New Federal Lifeline appeared first on Medika Life.

They drew blood at the many clinical trial sites, psychological testing was administered and the families, dutifully and in hope, brought their affected loved ones week after week. The trial would go on with hundreds of supposedly healthy, but impaired, older adults agreeing to all of it. And yet there was one piece missing in the trials and no one noticed it. What was it?

We stood at a major medical center in the New England states and talked about the patients, the test results, and the findings. Among those peering at the data were several interns writing dissertations on the disease, each one looking for a scrap on which to pin their epic piece of professional accomplishment.

I had recently returned from a trip to the Mid-West as part of my travels to various centers and I had one question that bothered me. As a psychologist, they trained me to look at people, but not confine my questions to one person, but to look at the group. After visiting at least ten centers, something became apparent to me and I had to voice my concern.

“Where’s the data on the caregivers,” I asked the group. They looked at me as though I must be falling into Alzheimer’s grip, too. Data on caregivers? No one was collecting that.

We know people don’t live in vacuums, and yet here was a multi-million dollar grant, written over weeks, that concentrated solely on testing the patient in every regard but one, the social side. Sure, they had a scale for that. How did they prepare themselves for the day? Were they able to dress, close their buttons, and comb their hair? Could they recognize themselves in the mirror? How did they interact with others?

I remembered my interaction with a couple where the wife began crying. Her husband, a former editor of a well-known journal, was frequently in the basement, fashioning bayonets from kitchen knives. The reason? He said he’d have to defend them once “they” came. Who “they” were was never mentioned, but they were out there and they’d be coming.

She had to put a bracelet with his name and phone number on it around his wrist when he went out on his bicycle now because he often got lost. Driving was out of the question after several car accidents. But the bike didn’t prove a suitable solution, either. Now, he had to wait and prepare at home and couldn’t leave her alone because they were coming.

As I sat and listened to her and many other spouses over the months of my travels, I became convinced that the protocol had a flaw; nothing about the caregivers. We didn’t ask them if they were depressed or anxious, or how they got through this incredible journey into darkness. Most of the time, they sat quietly next to the patient. This was less to help our research than to encourage the patient to take part.

I recall the husband who tried to eat paperclips because he couldn’t decide what was food and what wasn’t. Often, he’d leave the couple’s seventeenth-floor apartment, and, once out the door, he didn’t know which apartment was theirs. He’d opened the only door he found and was then locked into the stairwell.

Another patient, a woman in her 70s, once she took her eyeglasses off, couldn’t figure out how to put them back on. She also had difficulty at dinnertime, trying to eat the flatware instead of the food.

Imagine the frustration, alarm, and depression any of this can cause someone when it happens daily. How can anyone tolerate it without some help for their mental health?

We have diagnosed slightly fewer than seven million people in the United States with Alzheimer’s. If each of them has one caregiver, the number of people who require help with this disorder will be doubled. And, if things progress, thanks to medical advances, the number may quadruple in the next decade or two. But who is looking at the disease’s effects on caregivers, who, like the primary patient, are suffering from, if not with, Alzheimer’s?

I saw the mental torment of the man who had to drive his wife for almost two hours from their home to the testing center. “She kept changing the radio dials all the way,” he said, almost sobbing. “I couldn’t get her to stop.”

Then there was the extremely patient aide who had to keep coaxing an elderly woman with a promise of ice cream and lunch at a local deli. “All she wants to do is go for ice cream,” she said. The patient was delightful and used humor to answer every question. It turned out to be a common defense against memory loss and the pain it caused so many people.

One man, who had been married for almost fifty years, was on the verge of tears as he told me how his wife screamed when he tried to get into bed with her. “She keeps saying she has a husband, and he’ll come and find him there.”

Another man said that his wife was sure that someone was trying to break into their million-dollar home, so they had security systems put in at least three times. She never felt safe, whatever system was installed. And she kept firing the staff because she was sure they were stealing. In fact, she couldn’t remember where she’d put her jewelry and accused them of stealing it.

I turned to the group that day and asked what was the reason no measures were being taken for caregivers. As I recall, I said, “It’s a great resource for a dissertation any of you want to write.” I think that caught more attention than the computer screen.

Of course, that was two decades ago and we’re still trying to figure out how to help the other Alzheimer’s patients, the caregivers. How has the spread of this scary disease through social contact hurt their physical and mental health?

We have two groups that need to be assessed and treated, but we often fail to notice the second one.

The post The Forgotten Ones in the Tragedy of Alzheimer’s Disease appeared first on Medika Life.

Social Security adjudicators working on applications for benefits have licensed professionals to evaluate the case and rate them regarding the person’s ability to perform any work. Physicians and licensed psychologists never see the applicants, only the information in the file.

Applicants that can’t lift at least 5 lbs. for a specific length of time may still be seen as able to do sedentary work, and here’s where the cards are stacked against them.

The Dictionary of Occupational titles, last updated in 1977, lists over 12,700 jobs many available for unskilled, sedentary workers at that time. Among the jobs are shoe sole gluer, fish scaler, nut sorter, dowel inspector, and egg processor. Where in the US do we have people gluing soles on shoes or sorting nuts?

A pinball machine repairer is still available, but how would a person with sedentary issues be able to do that? The jobs are still listed as existing here, and adjudicators see that as a valid reason to deny benefits to a disabled person. Shouldn’t the listings be updated? Who’s responsible for that?

Some people receive benefits who can do other than sedentary work and be employed in a variety of jobs. I recall a man that field workers found lying under his truck doing repairs on it. Another man was engaged in a home repair business, a third was pulling a boat trailer, and the list continues.

How do I know about this? I worked as a medical consultant for Disability for over a decade, and I attended meetings where they pointed out recent fraud. Adjudicators told me about the old job listings they were using to deny benefits, and as long as they were in that book, they were used.

Those who knew they didn’t deserve benefits know one thing that protects their fraudulent claims; many states may have only two field inspectors to check up on questionable claims.

How does Disability know about these claimants? It’s simple; someone reported them to Social Security. As far as I know (from my years working there), there are no regular visits to check up on those receiving benefits. A paper trail tracks some on a one, three, or never basis according to their assigned disability rating. The last are those seen as rated with no medical improvement expected, such as terminal cancer or, perhaps, another terminal illness that will result in death within one year.

Reports may prompt the inspectors to make a trip out into the field. Nosey or unhappy neighbors and vigilant citizens keen to report fraud are the banes of those who are inappropriately collecting benefits. No reports might mean a cursory trip occasionally to check up on someone. Otherwise, various forensic methods will be used to catch the fraudsters.

Think how many people have been denied because they couldn’t find a fish scaling job. Also, think about the stress, the endless hours of trying to contact someone to help, or the process of giving up in depression. Isn’t it enough that they want to work and can’t? How demeaning is that?

Don’t we determine our self-worth by how we contribute to society or our families? Being pushed aside like this is saying the disabled are worthless, and that’s not as bad as it gets. Some may commit suicide. I don’t have data on that, but it’s not a bad guess on my part.

If you or someone you know has been denied Social Security Disability benefits, you have a right to ask for a reconsideration and a review after that by a judge. Should you not be satisfied with the outcome, contact the local office of your state’s Federal Senator and ask for a “sensitive inquiry” on their part.

You can also contact an attorney who specializes in these cases. Their fee is set by law and determined by how much money (often back benefits) is realized.

The post Ruling Against the Disabled and Denying Social Security Benefits to Them appeared first on Medika Life.

I introduced Henry in an earlier article; here is his story in more detail. Henry is a 69-year-old widower living alone in a small town about 60 miles from the nearest metropolitan area. He has a small pension and healthcare coverage via Medicare, a Medigap policy, and a Medicare Part D drug policy. He was recently hospitalized in the ICU with a serious urinary tract infection that spread to his kidneys [pyelonephritis] and to his bloodstream [septicemia], and then his lungs [acute respiratory distress syndrome.] This was a recipe for rapid demise, but the needed intensive acute care is where American medicine excels. It was the full court press to save his life, and it was successful.

A week later, he called me and asked for some advice. He was discharged from the hospital to take his former medications plus a few more. He was now to take twenty-three — yes, 23 — different prescription drugs, some once, some twice, and some three times per day, along with one by shot monthly. He was not sure why many of them had been prescribed and asked if I thought he needed them all.

I responded that, at 400 miles distant, I could not be his doctor, but I would review the list and offer some questions he might ask his physician. He sent me the list, and I reordered it by category: two for heart failure (he did not know that he had heart failure!,) two for diabetes, three for high blood pressure, one to lower his cholesterol, a monthly shot of testosterone for impotence, one to shrink his prostate (it was felt in the hospital that an enlarged prostate had been a predisposition to his urinary tract infection), one for depression, an antibiotic to finish up the treatment of his kidney infection and a few others.

I asked him who his primary care physician was and learned he did not have one but went to four different doctors, each of whom treated different issues, and none of whom shared all of his information with each other. Whenever one of them checked his blood pressure, it would be elevated, so that doctor would either add a drug or increase the dosage of one or more.

He told me that it was always normal when he went to the local drug store and checked his blood pressure. I told him it might well be that he had “white coat hypertension,” meaning it was only high in the doctor’s office. Perhaps if he took these regular readings to his doctor, the physician would get him off one or more of the blood pressure meds. Besides, two of the three had a known side effect of impotence. Finally, I noted that he was on one drug to shrink his prostate, yet the testosterone might well be causing some of his prostate enlargement.

Henry’s story represents much of what is not working in the delivery of medical care today. He has four complex, chronic illnesses – heart failure, diabetes, hypertension, and depression. These all require careful attention and care coordination, preferably by a single primary care physician who knows the patient’s home and social setting as well as his direct medical issues.

The blood pressure medication story is representative. He was getting many too many drugs that he did not need and had become impotent as a result. Rather than looking for the cause, he was given another drug [testosterone] that probably had no value but was likely enlarging his prostate. As a result, he developed an infection that almost killed him. The hospital doctors had added a drug to shrink his prostate but left the testosterone in place. And all these drugs were expensive for him and his Medicare Part D insurance plan.

Heart failure and diabetes together consume more than 50% of our healthcare dollars. Here is a person whose care is not being adequately monitored; instead, he is getting one drug after another without attention to what else is happening. This lack of care coordination is a prime reason why the costs are so high yet the quality so low. The problem is less that drug companies charge too much for many drugs (they do) but rather that too many drugs are prescribed unnecessarily or inappropriately.

It is also instructive that Medicare pays without question for intensive hospital care – tens of thousands of dollars in Henry’s case, yet pays primary care physicians minimally – even though with time to listen, think and consider, a PCP could have, with limited costs, prevented the hospitalization.

My first suggestion was that Henry needed a primary care physician, one to call his own. He learned that a young doctor he had met at a nearby hospital would be setting up private practice near his town, so he became one of the first patients. Since the PCP did not have many patients yet, he gave Henry the time needed. A few months later, he called and told me that he was now taking just seven medicines, felt better, and was saving a lot of money.

But during our initial discussion, I also asked him what he weighed. I have known him for over forty years but had not seen him for more than twenty. I recalled a stocky, muscular man with perhaps a bit of a beer belly, so I was surprised when he said he weighed 285 pounds. His wife of more than 50 years had died a few years before and he found himself lonely and isolated. He rarely went out and told me he did not exercise; it was just too difficult. He fixed his own meals, mainly from prepared foods.

I asked him what he planned for lunch and was told soup and a sandwich. The soup was a canned one, so I asked him to read the sodium content to me. It was 320mg, or 35% of the daily recommended amount. The can had “two servings,” but he planned to eat the whole thing or 70% of his daily salt requirement (assuming he was not on a restricted salt intake because of his high blood pressure and heart failure) in the soup alone! The sandwich was salami on white bread with some lettuce and mayonnaise.

That sounded great for his high cholesterol problem. Together we figured out that he ate about 2000 calories per day, which he thought was about right based on the soup can label. I suggested that 2000 calories was about right when he was 22 and in the Army, but now, since he did not exercise and needed to lose weight, this was way too much.

My next suggestion was that he needed to get out, interact with people again, carefully consider his diet and begin a modest exercise program, perhaps just a short walk each day. When he called later, he told me that a friend had gotten him to start going with him to the local senior center, where he had made some new friends. Eventually, he agreed to go to evening dances, where he met a widow whose company he enjoyed. His depression seemed to have lifted; he was exercising and enjoying dancing again. I could hear the smile in his voice.

Henry still has four serious chronic conditions. But with a single physician serving as his primary care physician who was aware of all of his medical, emotional, family, and financial issues, his care became much more effective. And when he did need a specialist, which was now rare, the primary care physician became the orchestrator, not just the referrer. As a result, Henry now has better quality medical care, he has a much higher quality of life, he is spending less of his money and much less of Medicare, Medigap, and Medicare Part D’s money. In short, it is a win-win for all concerned.

The key to improving Henry’s care was to find a PCP who would and could spend the time with Henry necessary to offer such comprehensive care. Today, because of high overhead costs and low insurance payments per visit, most PCPs need to see about three patients per hour. They just do not have the amount of time a person like Henry requires. But those that do provide such time offer much better care. Yes, more time per patient means fewer patient visits per day, so someone has to pay for the difference. Insurance rarely does, which is unfortunate. The patient will have to pay the PCP directly, “Direct Primary Care” or DPC. But as we will see in later articles, the total cost of care comes way down, quality goes up, and patient and doctor become less frustrated. Henry is a great example of how totally dysfunctional care can, quite simply and a very low cost, be converted to excellent, cost-effective care.

The post More Time With a Primary Care Provider Means – Better Care, Lower Costs and Less Frustration – A Win, Win, Win appeared first on Medika Life.

Until now, you just sort of accept medical caregivers to be what it is, even if it frustrates you. But the time is rapidly approaching when you will expect an adequate period of time with your caregiver, that the caregiver will know you as a person and indeed know you as a person that is part of a family, a community, and a society. You will not tolerate any longer being treated as a “number,” a “case,” or as a “problem.” If you don’t receive the care as described, you will seek out care elsewhere.

An example of this is a friend, Rebecca, a physician’s wife, who developed breast cancer. She was seen immediately by a topnotch surgeon who did her biopsy and then lumpectomy in a very timely manner with plenty of discussion and “hand holding,” She then went to a highly regarded medical oncologist with the expectation that she would receive her drug therapy and radiation therapy at that individual’s hospital. She knew that the oncologist was well trained and very competent. However, the physician seemed pleasant enough but not engaging and not really focused on my friend as a person.

It seemed as though she went through a “checklist” of information in a “rote-like” manner. Rebecca felt like she was just “one more” breast cancer patient rather than an individual with a particular problem. She felt that perhaps the physician was just having a tough day or that she, the patient, was being seen at the end of a long line of other patients that day. But no matter, this was the physician who was to be her primary caregiver concerning an issue of utmost importance to her. The result: My friend went elsewhere for her medical oncology and radiation therapy care. The basic message, of course, is that patients now want and expect not only competency but also personal and professional care and will both pay for it and demand it. A bit of empathy doesn’t hurt either.

Compare that story to this one. A couple, Bob and Ruth, went to a small Caribbean island for a two-week vacation. On the last day of their vacation, the husband had a heart attack. Bob was taken to the island’s small 25-bed hospital. He and Ruth, who works at a major hospital in a patient care/advocacy profession, were immediately concerned that the level of care would not be up to the standards that they would have expected in their large U.S. city. However, what they found, to their obvious pleasure, was a highly skilled physician who was also highly interactive with the two of them. He did the appropriate diagnostic tests to demonstrate that it was a heart attack and then began the proper medical therapy. Concurrently he arranged for Bob’s air transport to a major Florida hospital.

Meanwhile, others at this small hospital helped Ruth cope with her concerns and deal with some practical issues of getting checked out of the hotel, returning the rental car, arranging medical evacuation flight and all the other details that needed to be done. In short, they looked after her as well as her husband. Ruth cannot speak highly enough of the care that her husband received.

Both of these patients were “connected” to the healthcare professions. So, if you think compassionate, attentive care always comes to such individuals, think again. Years ago, doctors offered their colleagues and families “professional courtesy.” No more. That will not change, but whether the doctor or family member is a patient or not, they will expect compassionate, attentive care just like everyone else. They may be the ones to push the system the hardest and, at the same time, “look in the mirror” at their own practice patterns and initiate change. Change will occur but never as soon as desired.

Both of these stories also illustrate the issue of complex, chronic disease. These diseases do not go away; they can often be cured, but the possibility of a subsequent problem [heart failure] or recurrence [cancer] is real. Many chronic illnesses will be with the patient for life. They require many different practitioners with differing skills to help care for them, which all need coordination.

But in America today, care for these complex, chronic illnesses, which consume more than 70% of all medical care expenditures, are definitely not addressed in a coordinated manner except in a few centers and practices. This means that the care is not up to the quality levels it could be given our knowledge base and our excellent practitioners, and it also means that the costs are much too high. We need to find a way to change our delivery system so that it delivers coordinated, compassionate, and safe care to individuals with these complex, chronic diseases.

Here is a “problem” which everyone needs to understand. If you are on Medicare, Medicare sets the payment for the doctor. He or she cannot bill you more than what Medicare allows. So, if you say to your doctor, “Look, I’d like to spend some more time to fully have you understand my situation or so that I can better understand your advice,” the doctor can say “OK” but Medicare will not pay any more for that extra time and the physician, by law, cannot bill you for the extra time spent. If you were doing a new will and wanted to spend more time understanding what the lawyer was recommending, the lawyer would say “OK,” but both of you would know that you would be billed for the added time. With Medicare, you don’t have that option.

Consider Renee. A few years ago, she asked me for the name of a physician who would give her the time needed for her situation as an older single lady with multiple chronic problems not being fully addressed by her all too many doctors. I suggested Gary Milles, MD MPH, who has a “concierge” practice. He charges a flat fee of $1850 per year and, in return, is available by cell phone 24/7, text, and email. He has only about 490 patients, unlike his original practice with 2700. So, he can offer same or next-day appointments lasting as long as needed.

Each year he does a very comprehensive evaluation lasting two hours, including multiple blood tests, a vision, hearing, and pulmonary analysis at no added charge. Importantly, if a specialist is needed, he will call that doctor directly, explain why he is referring you, and ask for a prompt appointment. That means you will be seen much sooner than if you called that doctor’s office and the doctor will understand why you are there when you come for your appointment. This all makes a big difference in care.

“You aced it when you referred me to Dr. Gary Milles! He has been terrific for me. First, he found out why I’ve had very high BP for four years, e.g., 250/160. Then, instead of all those blood pressure pills, he stopped them and put me on something less powerful and with less side effects and stopped some supplements recommended by a different doctor, adjusted my diet, and gave me some suggestions on stress management. As a result, blood pressure is now OK. So far, so good….we had to make only one adjustment after several months!

“But now I need to see a pulmonologist. The one he recommended did not work out. Great background and experience, but when I had my first visit, things started out poorly (very impatient and rude with me) and quickly spiraled downhill. He definitely is not for me. I will ask for another option.” Dr Milles was thankful that she reported the poor caring and sent her to another pulmonologist who had the appropriate medical but also personal skills. The first pulmonologist will not be getting referrals in the future.

This change to “patient first” is occurring slowly, beginning with primary care physicians, using the direct primary care or concierge models, regaining the time needed to give adequate, expert attention, and, when necessary, coordinating multiple specialists. This means much better quality of care, coordination when needed, all tied into genuine compassion and caring. In that way, it will be a return to my physician grandfather’s time when treatment options were limited. Empathy and caring will be uppermost while still preserving the incredible advances modern science has brought forth. It will mean better care, less patient frustration, less doctor frustration and burnout, and a huge reduction in total costs as an added, very important bonus.

It is a contract between the doctor and patient; no insurer is involved. But of course, if the patient does not feel well treated, the contract is voided, and they will move on to someone else.

The post Consumerism in Healthcare appeared first on Medika Life.