Beware of Corporate Health Clinics

[Snibble]

I am posting an interesting, but not very surprising info on how %$&*ed up our health system is and how greedy the large corporate clinics are. I kept in touch with two friends of mine who are new dentists(2 years out of school). One was hired a year ago by a nice and up-to-date dental clinic run by a corporate clinic thats in charge of roughly 100 clinics in the US. Although the clinic physically looks great, with fancy wallpaper, lighting, design, etc... it was not 100% great in that they did cut some corners on actual EQUIPMENT. The company gave out a booklet that essentially tells the dentist to not use much medical terms such as "amalgam" or what not, but to use THEIR terms instead. You might think at this point "whats wrong with that? I prefer layman terms over medical terms!" But here's the scoop... instead of telling the patient if they would like regular amalgam(which is just tooth filling) to fix the tooth, they are instructed to say "black mercury filling". If anyone here took psychology, they would understand that this term gives an automatic bad image and more than likely the patient would not like to have that as the material to fix up their teeth. Instead, the clinic offers another choice.. with a much better sounding name but at a much steeper price.
The friend of mine did well for this clinic, bringining in roughly $40-50K per month. To a normal person, this number sounds HUGE, and anyone making that much money would be happy beyond belief. However, the company was a bit disappointed. They would review how much $$$ was brought in and if they feel it should be higher, they would ask what went wrong... and essentially add stress and pressure. Whats funny is that the people working for the corporations and are "over-seeing" are no more than regular dental hygienists... where they get paid by the hour and not a salary but act as though they are equally as good as a dentist if not better. Unfortunately, once instance occured where an elderly lady came in who was also on medicaid(most elderly patients nowadays are) wanted to have all her teeth removed so she could get a set of dentures. However, the patient's gums were not really all that great and dentures would have a hard time grabbing on. He recommended not extracting the teeth, but to fix them up since it would be more beneficial for her. HE explained that getting dentures with her gums might cause long term problems. Well, someone working there overheard/saw what was happening and was reported to the "higher-ups". As with everything in life, politics is just around the corner. They believe one of the assistants there ratted him out due to a personal issue. The company has had problems before where he would not do the higher costing procedure when it was not necessary, and simply used the latest incident as an excuse to terminate him. Currently this whole thing is going to be settled in a court room. For obvious reasons I can't say in which city or state this happened in, but the sad truth is its EVERYWHERE.
Finding an honest physician/dentist today is getting harder and harder. Its ironic how finding an honest mechanic is as hard as finding a good physician. I guess there are not many honest and caring people....

[rickg]

Gads! Sad how much crap is involved with our healthcare. I go to a doctor/dentist/whatever, and trust they're going to do what's best for me. After all, they are professionals, right?

(figured I'd better get my reply in here early before this turns political )

[el presidente]

I'm still trying to get a legitimate claim paid from November 2001!