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Monday, February 24, 2003Doctors around the country have begun charging patients for services that have traditionally been free, according to the American College of Physicians. The fees range from per-page charges for copies of medical records to $10 or $20 for filling out the forms people need to apply for medical-leave benefits. A few doctors have begun charging patients up to $20 to respond to e-mail questions about their health. Dr. Allen M. Dennison of Barrington, R.I., said he charges patients $2 a minute to diagnose minor ailments over the telephone, and around $15 to fill out the health history forms parents need to send their children to camp. "We are really on the ropes financially," he said. "I think the patients know that if they are going to take a doctor's time, they are going to have to pay for it." This hasn't yet become widespread, but there's an awful lot of chatter about it in physician circles. A lot of people are hesitant to adopt it because it seems, so, well....greedy. Yet, all of those phone calls and paperwork add up: Most primary-care doctors now spend an average of two to three hours a day on tasks for which they are not compensated, such as returning phone calls and filling out insurance forms, he said. That means less time to see patients, and the fewer patients doctors see in person, the less they get paid, he said. Two or three hours a day of paperwork is about right, only in most of cases it translates into less time for our families rather than our patients. One of the greatest contributors to the paperwork burden has been the FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) forms. The Act was meant to guarantee people time off to recuperate from a serious illness without running the risk of losing their jobs, but employers abuse it and make people fill out the forms for every mild illness they have. The forms are two pages long and require narrative descriptions of what’s wrong with the patient, how long it’s expected to last, what kind of therapy has been undertaken, how many times treatment will be needed, how long the illness is expected to last, etc. (I’m not sure how they square with the new privacy laws.) They are onerous. posted by Sydney on 2/24/2003 06:10:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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