Greedy doctors – a bitter pill to swallow

WITH seven months of 2014 gone, it’s when I begin worrying about the balance in my medical savings account.

In recent years, my medical savings have run out long before the year end, meaning I have had to pay claims out of my own pocket before qualifying for the above-threshold benefits.

And not because family members were sick more often. Greedy doctors have been to blame.

Yes, just as there are many good and honest doctors out there who are true to their calling and remain committed to serve the suffering, so too there are doctors who serve only their own financial interests.

Sadly, the bad apples in the medical barrel are tainting the entire profession.

This column is not aimed at doctors – it is for consumers of medical services who are preyed upon by that sector of doctors who care more about their own income than about their patients’ outcome.

Be aware there are doctors, medical schemes, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies only too ready to take advantage of the sick.

It’s time you took charge to avoid being ripped off.

There’s an old joke about the doctor whose son graduates from medical school and joins his practice.

After a while the son tells his father: “You know old Mrs Maharaj? You’ve been treating her rash for years and she never got better. I prescribed a new steroid cream and her rash is gone!”

The father responds: “You idiot! That rash put you through medical school.”

Now that’s a joke. It doesn’t reflect reality in its totality. But it does reinforce the growing perception that doctors are only out to make money.

Of course doctors and hospitals will deny it but several acquaintances in the medical field – yes, I have many doctor friends – have confirmed that hospitals pressure their tenant doctors to admit patients regardless of medical need, only to boost company profits.

Doctors who do not meet quotas face threats that their premises could be leased to more co-operative tenants.

Emergency room doctors are more likely to fill empty hospital beds than examine and send not-tooill patients home.

Some doctors who operate standalone practices have also swopped medicine for people with medicine for business.

There is over-prescription of medication in return for kickbacks such as trips to luxury holiday resorts and tablet (now there’s an appropriate term) computers from drug companies.

Needless medical procedures are ordered from physiotherapists, radiologists and pathologists within the same medical centre or down the road.

Gone are the days when your doctor will call you back on the telephone or respond to an email. When last did you see a doctor with stethoscope and medical bag making a house call in your neighbourhood?

Traditional out-of-hours service has all but disappeared. Doctors believe all this time can be more profitably spent with patients – and charged for – in the consulting room or with visiting drug reps who, by the way, are mostly young, attractive females.

It may sound like a fairytale but it’s true that only a couple of decades ago a visit to a doctor included the full consultation and medication for such a small fee that old women could pay from the money secured in a knot in one corner of a handkerchief.

Today there are lowly-paid Rottweiler-type receptionists employed by many specialists if only to repeatedly remind first-time patients making a booking that they must pay R550 in cash upfront.

These selfsame receptionists will overschedule patients – with the boss’s consent of course – at 15minute intervals and will not give a hoot if you are still waiting at 10.30am for your 9am appointment.

What has changed? Why has this noble profession been allowed to be invaded by avaricious members who will not hesitate to exploit the sick and dying to pay for their opulent homes, multiple domestic workers and gardeners, beach villas, luxury German sedans for themselves, German SUVs for their demanding wives, twice yearly overseas holidays, private schooling for their children, golf club fees, and other trappings of easily-attained affluence?

I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of students and doctors are still motivated by that sense of wanting to do good and who do not let a desire for money determine their service to the sick.

Greedy doctors pose a challenge to the medical profession to move to higher moral ground in the care of the sick. Those who want to continue being trusted family doctors – those pillars in the community – must give their unethical colleagues some strong medicine to swallow.

Yogin Devan is a media consultant and social commentator. Reach him on: yogind@meropa.co.za