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Unsupervised "surgery" and lawsuit


Guest JMPA

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An opthalmologist and a radiologist fighting over billing. The whole premise is rich with comedic possibilities....

 

What hurts us here is the practice being described as unsupervised. One more example of how the term "supervision" does more harm than good. Thankfully it details how the operation fell under the precise definition of supervision (not direct).

 

As a funny side note the practice site describes them as both "Physican's Assistants" and "Physicians' Assistants".........

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In his March 2011 ruling, Judge Whittemore explained that federal law lets physicians bill Medicare for supervised PA services under certain circumstances, and that state medical rules define "direct supervision" as "immediately available to furnish assistance and direction throughout the performance of the procedure. It does not mean that the physician must be present in the room when the procedure is performed."

 

Wait a sec...I thought PAs just coordinated care between the patient and surgeon. ;)

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A radiologist (who probably knows nothing of PAs) with a nurse wife? Yes he would.

 

Agreed- this is more about a non-physician doing the surgery and the billing process behind it. Although the fact that it was a PA doing the surgery was a bit of a red herring in the suit, and the real meat was the billing behind it... I still bet it really stuck in this guy's crawl about a non-physician doing a surgical procedure.

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