Comments on: Testing 1-2-3

By: Mottsapplesauce

Mottsapplesauce — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:56:57 +0000

Wonderful post! I’m not a clinician but have been in the DME industry for 15 years. I praise the insurance companies who use licensed practioners on their pre-determination & authorization review panels, but there are too few of them. I dread calling the ones who have no clinicians and/or very little medical background, & base their decisions on a ‘written policy’ instead of the individual’s medical needs.

By: SeaSpray

SeaSpray — Sun, 04 May 2008 05:45:22 +0000

Great post! Informative and something for all of us to consider. :

By: Kelly

Kelly — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:35:10 +0000

Dr. Rob – great post! I could not think about how much the relationship between the doctor and patient comes into play in situations like this – trust is a huge issue.

Case in point, at the age of 41 – I was having chest pains and being that I had been under more stress than usual and was not exercising or getting enough rest – I was worried. I went to my doctor – and because of my history of upper respitory infections the past year – he told me he was almost certain that it was costochondritis – but, could do an EKG in his office. As it turns out, he was right. I was relieved. I am so thankful for the relationship I (and my family) have with our doctor. We even run into one another at Sam’s and Target on the weekends.

By: Neumed

Neumed — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:49:17 +0000

Excellent post. I agree, insurance companies need to stick to writing policies and leave the medical decisions up to the doctor.

(Now, just let me get out my calculator so I can figure out the Spam question. Six plus seven equals… )

By: rositta

rositta — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:44:40 +0000

So in America you deal with insurance companies who don’t want to pay for tests whereas here in Canada we wait months for a test (we could die waiting). I the worst case though you can pay for a test out of pocket, we don’t have that option unless we come to America. There doesn’t seem to be a perfect system…ciao

By: wolley

wolley — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:07:03 +0000

This is where I totally agree with you. Health insurers should be like property/casualty or disability insurers.

Issue the policy, collect the premiums and pay claims within the conditions, limitations and exclusions of the policy. Don’t manage care. It’s not the insurance company’s job.

By: laurie edwards

laurie edwards — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:07:08 +0000

I couldn’t agree with your frustration more. This post has special relevance for me since I just spent the past several days at the hospital with a family member whose CT scan to “rule out” serious stuff turned up a 2cm mass in the brain. Then an MRI showed five more. We went from “not classical” tumors to lymphoma to all sorts of things and ended up with a neurological diagnosis, with all sorts of questions along the way because his symptoms pointed one way and his tests pointed another.

I’m glad we had doctors like you who advocated for him until we had the answers we needed.