Impartial Medicine?
Just when you thought insurance companies had reached the ultimate in stacking the deck against insureds, they come up with a new ace in the hole. Now they are buying up groups of treating doctors, which they will own, lock stock and barrel
In other words, a doctor who is treating you for an illness or injury which may be the basis of a disability insurance claim and who has to file medical reports on your behalf, may be filing the reports with his or her boss – the insurance company.
Talk about a conflict of interest!
The reasoning put forth by the companies is that they will be able to control costs better if they control how the medical practice is managed. Sounds good, but if experience is any indication as to how it will actually work, hold onto your wallet.
Those who represent disability insurance claimants know that insurance companies usually have a contested claimant’s medical evidence “fine-tooth combed” by a doctor who is employed by a medical services company, retained by the insurance company. In most cases, the medical services company has few sources of income other than the insurer. Likewise, many doctors employed by the medical service company have few, if any, sources of income, other than their work for the medical services company.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if the services company and its doctor employees know what’s good for them, they will tailor their medical findings to favor the medical service company’s customer, the insurance company. If they don’t, a substantial source of their income is likely to dry up and blow away.
Lawyers fighting for claimants in the disability income field learn that IMEs (so-called Independent Medical Exams) performed by a doctor employed by such a medical expert vendor, almost invariably result in a claim denial by an insurance company.
If this is the rule when the doctor’s agency employer is hired by the insurer, what is it going to be like when the insurer is actually the doctor’s “boss”? Is such a tighter relationship likely to make a doctor less favorably inclined toward the insurer?
Going a step further, the treating doctor recommends treatments and medication for the patient. If the doctor knows the insurer-employer pays for this wouldn’t there be an incentive to hold back, so as to make the treatment protocol less expensive? Isn’t that a clear conflict between the interests of the treating doctor, the insurance company for whom the treating doctor works, and the interests of the patient?
It seems clear that despite the growing trend of insurance companies buying medical groups, it should not be happening. Doctors are the people who actually define health claims, which in turn define the extent of financial liability of the insurance companies. The conflict of interest is too great if the insurer is actually the employer of a doctor defining the value of the claim against it
It’s bad enough that a whole medical service industry has grown up on the false premise that doctors who earn a large part of their living examining claimants for insurance companies can be neutral in their findings.
As a practitioner on behalf of claimants in the disability income insurance field for 30 years, we can attest that medical service IME doctors are anything but “independent”. If the doctors were direct employees of the insurance company, the odds of fair medical judgment would be laughable.
It is obvious that a patient wants a doctor to have only the patient’s interests in mind. A potential conflict of interest would have a devastating effect on the relationship. An actual conflict is terrifying.
On the basis of past insurance industry history, would anyone take bets that the insurance companies will not take the advantage that employing treating doctors affords?
