Have you called your primary care provider lately asking for an appointment? If so it was probably farther away than you had hoped. The national average wait to see a physician is 26 days. Once you see your doctor he or she is probably cordial but somewhat hurried. The average doctor-patient encounter lasts from 10 to 15 minutes, but that figure is probably skewed by Medicare patients who require longer appointments than average. There is a significant shortage of physicians.
Category: Medicare
Fraud Alert: Unsolicited Covid Tests Sent to Seniors, Bill to Medicare
When Covid first began to spread it was difficult for patients to obtain Covid tests without going to an emergency room. When tests first became widely available there were drive-through testing centers with lines that snaked for blocks. When my wife began to feel ill in January of 2021, I made her an appointment for a Covid test at a Walmart Neighborhood Market pharmacy. The soonest appointment available was eight days away. We pulled up to the drive-through window and a pharmacy technician gave us the sealed swab and instructed my wife how to use it. My wife sealed it in the appropriate bag and deposited it in an adjacent laboratory collection box outside the drive-through. The results were relayed to us by phone a day or two later.
Thursday Links
- The AMA’s Advancing Health Equity guide is a joke. But after the laughter dies, it is also very sad.
- British Columbia to send thousands of Canadian cancer patients to Washington state for treatment.
- Paragon: Medicare’s venture into “value based care” has done little except add administrative burden and a set of quality metrics that are easily gamed and don’t translate into better or more efficient care.
- Trump’s executive order allowing employers to fund individually owned health insurance is taking hold.
Meet Your New Primary Care Physician: MegaCorp
Large corporations are buying primary care physicians’ practices in droves. CVS bought Oak Street, while Amazon bought One Medical. Primary care is rather mundane as physicians’ practices go. So why are hospitals, insurers and pharmacy chains scooping up primary care practices?
The appeal is simple: Despite their lowly status, primary care doctors oversee vast numbers of patients, who bring business and profits to a hospital system, a health insurer or a pharmacy outfit eyeing expansion.
And there’s an added lure: The growing privatization of Medicare, the federal health insurance program for older Americans, means that more than half its 60 million beneficiaries have signed up for policies with private insurers under the Medicare Advantage program. The federal government is now paying those insurers $400 billion a year.