Posted on 02/25/2005 10:11:42 AM PST by Ramonan
DURHAM, N.C. — A group of Duke University physicians has threatened to stop treating military veterans referred by the Veterans Affairs Medical Center because the VA won’t pay enough. Executives of Duke’s Private Diagnostic Clinic physicians’ group voted to stop treating the veterans Jan. 15 because the VA system wouldn’t agree to pay them more than 100 percent of current Medicare reimbursement rates.
PDC Executive Director Paul Newman wrote in a Jan. 7 memo that the group wouldn’t treat VA patients. The new rule was to take effect Jan. 15, according to the memo, but apparently hasn’t.
“As far as we’re aware it’s never been implemented,” said Hal Hummell, spokesman for the Durham VA hospital. “They haven’t stopped seeing our patients.”
Hummell said the VA was negotiating with Duke about the reimbursement rate for patients referred to PDC when the VA physicians can’t provide needed care.
Hummell said the price the VA can pay referral doctors is set nationally and is pegged to the Medicare rate schedule. The VA pays 100 percent of the Medicare-established price of a procedure when veterans are referred to specialists outside the VA system, he said.
Hummell said he knew of no other situations across the country in which VA hospitals paid physicians more than the going Medicare rate. Duke is a Medicare provider and nearly 42 percent of the patients at Duke-owned Durham Regional Hospital are Medicare recipients.
I wish when they do articles like this they would tell us what the rates are and what the physicians think they should be.
This irks me. Are any of these physicians ones that participate in free medical care for others, such as third world countries? Do they turn other people at their doors such as illegals or those with no insurance?
I am all for capitalism and think that all government sponsored health care is socialist (rather give veterans the $ and have them get their own care/insurance based on their own decisions). However, in this case, I am all in favor of a special draft to put these doctors in a medical unit somewhere near FALLUJAH...
Surely, Duke University has turned down all government subsidity and research monies also. [pun intended]
Aren't these the same guys who botched a free liver transplant to an illegal alien, and then lost a $2 million malpractice lawsuit?
Jesica Santillan: Illegal Immigrant with Legal Transplants
by Kelly Mills
The tragedy surrounding 17-year old Jesica Santillan's premature death is one that rocked the medical community and the nation. A young girl needing a heart-lung transplant to survive was finally paired with a donor. However, after a mix-up at the Duke University Hospital, Jesica was given the transplant of a donor who had a different blood type than hers. So, with an organ inside, working against her already struggling body, Jesica laid by idly, her bodily slowly declining until-at the last minute-a second donor came through. It seemed like a storyline perfect for an ABC After School Special, but it ended with a sour twist as Scantillan died yesterday afternoon.
One part of the Jesica Santillan story, which few of the elite media are choosing to talk about, is the fact she was an illegal alien. Santillan's parents, in an attempt to save their sick daughter, paid a smuggler $5,000 to bring Jesica and her mother from their native Mexico into the United States. "Coming to America" afforded the Santillans to avoid the longer waiting periods in Mexico. Once here, Jesica waited on a donor list for 3 years.
snip
Santillan received not one, but two transplants. Heart and lung transplants are rare for teenagers: In the first 11 months of 2002, there were four nationwide for children between the ages of 11 and 17, United Network of Organ Sharing's records show. The previous year, there were four. Furthermore, according to the UNOS' records, 16 patients die in the U.S. each day while waiting for a potentially life-saving transplant operation. Eighty percent of patients awaiting transplants die before organs can be found.
United States citizens are being denied the right, in some cases, to a transplant so that illegal immigrants can be provided the chance at survival. Shouldn't U.S. citizens be given top priority? According to Anne Paschke, spokesman for the UNOS, Jesica's immigration status played no role because hospitals may place non-U.S. citizens on their waiting lists and must give them the same priority as citizens. However, they cannot perform more than 5 percent of their transplants on non-citizens.
snip
that means that if only four children received one all of last year, and Jesica received two, then she already received 50-percent of the total transplants nationwide.
http://tinyurl.com/4rgt7
As a University research facility, are they not tax exempt, except for salaries?
Thanks, I appreciate the information.
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