Patients Who Lose Patience

I am a private investigator with a significant number of clients who are doctors or other health care professionals. Over and over again, I have heard my clients express concern about the safety of themselves, their families and their staff because of patients angry over the restrictions imposed by HMOs and managed care organizations.

My new client, a pediatrician in practice for more than 30 years in the Bay Area, had been treating a young asthma patient for three years with good results when the family was moved from their previous health plan to a more restrictive HMO. The doctor attributed one reason for the boy’s successful treatment results to his ability to prescribe the most modern drugs available, which in most cases are among the most expensive. When, during a recent office visit, the physician explained that the new HMO would not pay for the more effective medication, both parents became extremely hostile and verbally abusive. After a tirade of profanity heard by a waiting room full of clients, the father threatened to “get” the doctor if his son suffered a relapse because of the switch to the less effective, older drug.

This is the 11th such case of violent threats on doctors that I have been personally contacted about this year.

I’m not trying to indict all managed care programs. Certainly they serve a purpose in delivering medical services to those who otherwise could not afford it. The doctor’s office and the hospital are places, by their very nature, of high emotions. The public should understand that doctors and staff are merely providing a service that is directed by the patient’s individual medical plan. In most cases, if they provide services exceeding the limits of the patient’s policy, they will not be paid and face the potential of losing their other patients who are members of the same plan.

The threats and violence directed toward physicians who practice abortions and other procedures involving personal moral decisions can be mistakenly justified by some. Threats and violence upon doctors who are merely attempting to deliver the best medical care possible under restrictions mandated by the patient’s own health care policy are absolutely intolerable and without justification.