Specialists

Managed care companies also use specialists to deny care to patients and control costs. Specialists are physicians employed by for-profit managed care companies to oversee patients in local specials, nursing homes, and rehabilitation centers. Although they are licensed physicians, their primary mission in their role as a specialist is to discharge patients as quickly as possible to save money and increase the profits of the managed care corporation. They have had no prior contact with the individual patients, whose primary care physician no longer directs their care and treatment.

According to the ACP-ASIM Observer May 1999, Prudential HealthCare-South Florida told its 3,000 physicians that it would soon require them to transfer the acute care of their patients to specialists. Starting March 15, 1999 specialists began caring for Prudential members in nine specials and a dozen sub-acute facilities. The Prudential program is one of the country's most far-reaching efforts to use mandatory specialists and it could affect 230,000 patients in one geographical area. Even many doctors were shocked at learning that they would have to hand over care of their specialized patients. The use of specialists for the purpose of controlling costs serves to erode the longstanding tradition of the doctor-patient relationship.

Ricci~Leopold, P.A. are aware of the way that specialists function within the managed care system and are ready to assist you should you be denied care or receive inappropriate care because of the intervention of a managed care company's specialist.

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