HAVE A HEART!
Cardiologist suing insurer after losing transit gig
The doctor is out.
Traveling cardiologist Perry Frankel, who examined transit workers from a mobile medical van parked outside bus and train depots, lost his gig when fired by heartless insurance giant Aetna, the Daily News has learned.
Frankel is now suing Aetna for $900,000 in unpaid claims, and he boasts the support of five unions — including the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Subway Surface Supervisors Association — that signed a letter hailing his work.
“We know we should go see a doctor for a physical, we feel a pain, but we don’t do that,” said SSSA President Mike Carrube, who convinced Frankel to take his medical practice on the road. “If my members don’t have the time because they’re working, I’m gonna bring the doctors to them.”
The mobile medicine man’s services quickly became popular, with transit workers represented by other unions eager for assessments in one of Frankel’s vans. Union leaders happily obliged.
“When you bring it where people work and live, you get a tremendous response,” Frankel, 61, told the News. “I don’t understand why an insurance company would take a doctor that five unions say is doing a great job and throw him out of their network when he’s been there for 25 years.”
Frankel said he initially started bringing a van to low-income areas several years ago. After meeting Carrube, Frankel started steering the van to see transit workers for about six weeks last spring — and quickly made fans of his union patients.
“Dr. Frankel has been a critical part of the health maintenance of various members,” read the glowing letter from the labor leaders. “Dr. Frankel’s mobile exam units have been instrumental in saving the lives of countless members who have limited access to such services.”
Among their fortunate ranks is Kimberly Coachman, 45, a bus dispatch supervisor who visited the mobile van last spring outside the East New York, Brooklyn, depot where she works.
The thorough, warm and welcoming staff used a sonogram on her neck to check her arteries and uncovered a leak in one of her heart valves.
“My own doctors didn’t even know to check for this,” said Coachman, who’s still receiving follow-up monitoring from her regular physician.
Aetna, a health insurance provider for transit workers, declined to comment to The News.
But the company prohibited Frankel from using his mobile clinics, according to his suit filed in state court in May.
Aetna halted payments in June 2017, and announced three months later that it would not renew his contract after 25 years — booting him from its list of health care providers.
“He was providing a good and valuable service to the members,” TWU Local 100 President Tony Utano said.