Healthcare crisis: not enough specialists for the poor
By Anna Gorman
Los Angeles Times, December 15, 2012
By the end of the decade, the nation will be short more than 46,000 surgeons and specialists, a nearly tenfold increase from 2010, according to the Assn. of American Medical Colleges. Healthcare reform is expected to worsen the problem as more patients — many with complex and deferred health needs — become insured and seek specialized treatment.
Many of the newly insured will receive Medi-Cal, the government plan for the needy as administered through the state of California. Clinics already struggle to get private specialists to see Medicaid patients because of the low payments to doctors. Last week, an appellate court decision that authorized the state to move forward with 10% cuts in Medi-Cal reimbursement, which could make finding doctors for those patients even more difficult.
“Specialists are paid so poorly that they don’t want to take Medi-Cal patients,” said Mark Dressner, a Long Beach clinic doctor and president-elect of the California Academy of Family Physicians. “We’re really disappointed and concerned what it’s going to do for patient access.”
In Los Angeles County, the sheer volume of poor or uninsured patients needing specialist services has long overwhelmed the public health system, creating costly inefficiencies and appointment delays that can stretch as long as a year and half.
Patients’ conditions often must be dire for them to see a neurologist, cardiologist or other specialist quickly. Community clinics try to bypass the backed-up formal government referral system by pleading, cajoling and negotiating to get less critically ill patients moved up on waiting lists.
At times, clinic staff members are forced to work against one of their key missions by sending patients to emergency rooms to increase the odds of their seeing a specialist more quickly.
http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-clinic-specialists-20121216,0,5422442,full.story
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
My career in private practice began with the introduction of Medicare and Medi-Cal (Medicaid). At that time, I had no problems referring Medicare and privately insured patients to specialists, but the majority of them refused to see my Medi-Cal patients. The stigma of “welfare patient” was there right from the beginning.
Quite a few years later, my Medicare patients continued to be accepted without question, but some of the managed care patients were rejected, and, of course, Medi-Cal patients continued to be rejected, except by a few very dedicated specialists. Eventually with EMTALA, at least I could force unwanted referrals for patients requiring specialized emergency services by sending them directly to the Emergency Department. What a terrible way to practice medicine.
As stated in my last message, there will be about 10,000,000 Medi-Cal patients in California, once the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented. Can you imagine the specialists suddenly opening their doors and welcoming these patients into their practices?
I’ll say it once again. If we had an improved Medicare single payer system that treated everyone equitably, we would not have this problem.
Re-posted with permission from pnhp.org.
The specialists simply make enough money from those with the ability to meet their fees that they don’t feel any need to see those who can’t. Lets say you have a business (any business) that is doing well. You have sufficient customers that you see no need to take any customers who can’t pay the same charges as the rest of your customers. This is the situation here. The lower fees that Medicaid pays aren’t enough to make these specialists want to see these people when they already are earning sufficient amounts of money from those who can meet their standard fees for service. Then too, with office overheads and everything else (malpractice insurance), most likely Medicaid isn’t paying enough to make it profitable to see these people today. So they aren’t seen (except through emergency room visits).