The most recent was yesterday at work. I received a packet in the mail from an attorney who was representing a patient of mine that I haven't seen for two years. The client had been in a car accident, I'd treated her a good handful of times. I am still awaiting payment for three or four of her visits, as their personal injury protection/auto insurance coverage ran out before those were paid. The patient was not healed when she stopped coming in, but could not afford to pay out of pocket. She is currently in the process of working out a financial settlement with the auto insurance company, out of which, I will finally be paid.
The packet contained a copy of all the records I had sent them. They wanted me to review the records to make sure they were correct and then sign a declaration page. These things are pretty straight forward, so I started filling in my name as I scanned down the document. That's when I spotted the last paragraph. It stated that I believed the patient had not reached full recovery, that I felt her condition was directly related to the accident, that she would require further treatment and therapy, and that I expected to see her back in the next two to three months to evaluate for further treatment.
I haven't seen this person for a solid two years. I have no idea what her current condition is, whether I think she will improve any further, or even if I think she has or has not improved to pre-injury status. And I sincerely doubt I'll see her back in the next two to three months.
Sneaky, throwing that in at the end after all the standard, boring legal mumbo jumbo.
It's completely possible that it's all the truth. Maybe her doctor, her chiropractor, and her physical therapist all believe this to be true. And if so, their declarations should help her attain whatever she deserves to help pay for whatever she needs. But I don't like being asked to put my professional reputation on the line to say something I don't know to be true.
Truth be told, as I said above, this came on top of a couple of other situations. Situations that make me wonder: If less people tried to squeeze "the system" (whichever system that may be) for more, maybe "the system" would cost less for all of us. I'm not talking about big fraud cases. I'm talking about things like getting an insurance company to pay 'just a little bit more' for someone's profit. Who pays for that? I'll tell you right now, it doesn't come out of the CEO's pocket. Nope, it comes out of our ever-increasing premiums.
I'm simplifying things a bit. Okay, I'm simplifying things a lot. But you get what I mean.
For me, rules are rules, laws are laws. If I follow them, I sleep well at night.
And to balance out too much seriousness on a Friday, here's a little laugh for this beautiful day:
I'd give you the source, but I pulled it off a facebook feed, where it has circulated 3,576 times. :)
***Ally
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6 comments:
Hi Ally and happy Friday! So refreshing to know there's people in the health field who have integrity. I think this kind of thing you wrote about happens more often than we'd like to think. Kudos to you for catching the sneaky stuff.
And? LOVED the funny.
Oh I would flip too. On the plus side if you let her come in without paying I am sure she will be back in next two to three months. Or better yet, if you send her overdue charges you can rest assure she will not be coming back for evaluation, ever :)
Love that sign!
Good for you! I absolutely agree. I believe that acting with integrity means you never have to worry that someone will know what you've done or said.
Well I can say a lot about this as I had to go through the hell that this person is experiencing...
All I asked for was medical care. That's it. And the jerks weren't paying. Why? Because on a CT scan the evil trolls at the workers comp caught wind that I had a cyst on my ovary. That was more than enough for them to blame my entire back injury (which was on 3 different surveillance tapes) was caused by this cyst.
We're my doctors and other medical professionals called upon to fill out documents for court?
Absolutely.
Did they have the right to contact the attorney and say "Hey I haven't seen this patient since XYZ...I have no idea" and they had the right to reevaluate them.
Point is, there are people who abuse the system and for every abuser there is one poor individual behind them looking for justice...and when I say justice I mean medical care.
And you know what Ally, if you have my luck, you'd be the one getting caught for putting a different spin on it. So good on ya for sticking to the truth! And really, the nerve of some people to assume you'd just sign without seeing this person in two years!
It's a crazy world, isn't it?! And I'm so slapdash, I would have skimmed right over that sneaky paragraph in fine print.
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