I love my physical therapist, and I have the highest respect for the profession. The best way to imbue that sense of professional loyalty and appreciation in your patients is to simply do a good job treating them. Don’t tell them about what makes you great – show them. Help them rehabilitate and accomplish their goals, and you’ll make them physical therapy loyalists for life.
So, what happens to those people in the 19 states who make too much money to be eligible for Medicaid, but who make too little money to be eligible for a subsidy? They fall into the dreaded “coverage gap” – and people in this group generally aren’t subject to the IRS penalties for their failure to purchase insurance. (Although this doesn’t address the greater problem: they don’t have insurance.)
Where I live in Chicago, the population density is about 10,000 people per square mile. Generally, if an area has less than 1,000 people per square mile, it’s considered to be a “rural area.” Before this spring, private insurance plans in Arizona were only required to cover telehealth services rendered to those living in rural areas. But as of May 17th, they’re required to cover telehealth services statewide.
Patients who feel that they received treatment to which they didn’t consent may feel betrayed by their providers and distrustful of the medical system. This does patients and providers a disservice, and it undermines the patient’s dominion over his/her body. “Patient autonomy” isn’t a buzzword; it’s a mandate.
To manage an influx of patients and escalating costs, some providers now offer shared appointments, wherein they see a group of patients with similar symptoms simultaneously. In fact, as of 2010, 13% of family physicians offered these appointments.
More times than I can count, I’ve been asked: “How long did it take for you to start feeling better?” I met Sandy, my physical therapist, when I was wheelchair-bound and in constant, horrific pain. So, I’m sharing this journal entry, written 15 days after meeting Sandy.
And to answer the question: It took less than 15 days.
My occupation was as a professional patient.
It’s like having two full-time jobs and never being done with work. It’s exhausting, time consuming, requires top-notch communication skills, and is a challenge each day. You get no days off. You have no coworkers. You get no compensation. Basically, it’s crap.
He brilliantly describes how the medical ethicists linger in the halls of Congress, between testifying at hearings and presenting at conferences. They “serve medicine and ethics, but not patients.” His descriptions conjure up a behind-the-scenes mastermind to me – the fictional “reasonable man” about whom I learned in law school, or an Aristotelian good man. This man – The Ethicist – has divorced ethical decisions from patient care in a decisively clean way.
HIPAA has two general components: privacy and security. Most of our clients do a great job with patient privacy: they know not to discuss PHI, and they are generally committed to ensuring that their patients’ information remains private. However, HIPAA does not always place substance above form – and for good reason, if the breach examples provided above are any indication.
