Fraud, illegal clinic practices....welcome to corporate medicine.

[Katera]

Practicing in Urgent Care for 20 years I have seen the evolution of what was once called "minor emergency".  In the last few years I have worked for a couple different UC corporate chains, and the shocking fraud that goes on there is amazing.  Up-coding charts, highly questionable Medicare billing practices, and ancillary staff so undertrained that I would not let them give my dog a shot, least of all my kids.  Multiple corporate UC chains sued for fraudulent billing over the past few years.  "Techs" as they are called at a few places I work are not even MA's anymore.  They have no training in medicine, but instead are given a 20 minute "how to give a shot" lesson by another poorly trained "tech".  So far I have seen injection nerve injuries, ruptured TM's from ear lavages that the "tech" was literally doing for the first time, and a host of other horrific activities.  And X-Ray?  The corporate overlords will send the front office people to NCT school for a month....and BAM!  They start shooting X-Rays...alone.  Their films are terrible, and most don't even know the positions.  They constantly over-radiate pt's because they don't know what they are doing.  I've had radiologists send back notes basically saying, "are you kidding me"?  If by some miracle you get to work with a real RT, they are also the ones giving shots, taking blood, running tests etc.  All with Zero nursing type training.  In Texas NCT's are NOT supposed to shoot any x-ray on a minor that is not a simple extremity i.e. like a CXR.  Yet, they do it all the time.  If they refuse, they get fired.  I have been threatened to "not bring it up", or I won't be asked back.......

 

Is this what we have come to?  Gawd I wish I could retire.

[Boatswain2PA]

Increased regulation = more bureaucrats = more managers = smaller clinics get bought out because they can't pay for more managers = more corporate medicine = follow the rules or you're fired and won't be able to find another job cause there's only one game in town.

Deregulation is ugly.  Having patients pay for healthcare is ugly.  

But I think that beats where we are heading.

[TWR]

What Katera states goes on in many family practices particularly when they have a connection to testing facilities or labs or better yet offer all these services "in house"!  Have seen this several times in Houston.