Posted by JennyR on December 30, 2000, at 10:11:27
Mid-year my pdoc said he was dropping my insurance at the end of the year. I choose to hang on with him even though there were some weird prior incidents.
One prior incident was he was lying about what he was submitting to the insurance company - my statements showed he was putting down "psychotherapy" instead of medication management. The insurance company was refusing to pay for my therapy with my therapist (MSW) and my therapist thought that by the pdoc submitting therapy instead of med management the insuranc company may feel why pay for it in two places, hence denying my therapy. I brought this up to the pdoc who said he is submitting medical management and someone at the insurance company is submitting the wrong code. I called the insurance company to ask them to correct the code and they said the pdoc submits the code and this is what he is submitting. I then asked him about it on the next visit and he got very flustered and said he had a memo from the insurance company saying he is allowed to submit a particular code which covers both med. management and therapy. He showed me the code and it was a therapy code. He said he gets more money by doing it this way. But he had lied the first time, saying he was submitting medical management and someone there was putting a code on. He thought I was naive or wouldn't check.
Incident number two was when he saw my husband who was also seeing him, when he told him he was dropping the insurance at the end of the year, he said our insurance pays him about $50 for the 15 minutes and privately he can get $125, but he'll continue to see us for the $50 if we want. I thought it was very tacky for him to say the part about he can make the $125.
In terms of med, however, he knows his stuff. I was on Serzone. At first the 300 mg was good, then it wasn't doing much, he raised it to 400 and eventually to 600. After a while, recently that pooped out. I really was going to phase him out and hoped to just be off the stuff altogether, but then when the 600 of serzone stopped working, and a lot of personal stresses and strains were going on, it was clear I still needed meds. So at a time when I wanted to disengage from Dr. Moneygrubber (name changed to protect the guilty) I had to continue to avail myself of his services. He put me on Wellbutrin which was hell for a while. He gave me ambien to sleep, which only lasted a few hours and then I was up. Then he changed the ambien to klonopin which was great. This combination is working for me. Usually when I see him, I get a 3-month mail in prescription, or if it's something new, a one month for the pharmacy plus a 3 month mail in prescription. So I went for my last visit of the year and forever, and he gave me the mail in on the Wellbutrin, but said the Klonipin could only be one month at a time. That's NY law. He asked where the mail order company was, and it is PA. He said to call them and see if they would accept it. I called and explained and they said it's fine as long as he puts an appropriate diagnosis. I called him back the next morning and told him they said it was fine. He said the only appropriate diagnosis is seizure disorder so he can't do it. I said I had explained to them what it was for and they had said it was okay, and that I know from my reading (this board particularly, thanks folks)that it is common to use it the way we are. He asked for the number and said he'd call. I didn't hear back so I called him at the end of the day. He said he called and they told him it can only be filled for seizure disorders. It didn't make sense to me that they were telling us two different things and then I realized he's lied before, so maybe I should call again and check. I called and explained exactly what it was for and they said it is fine, he should just put Dx: anxiety or Dx: anxiety disorder. I left him a message that night saying this is what they say, so can I please usse my mail order benefit, and can he write it out and give it to my husband who was coming the next day for his final visit. I called the next morning to see if he got the message and if he was going to do it. He said, in a really nasty tone "fine, just to stop these phone calls, I'll give it to you." This was upsetting because he's the one who told me to check. I said to him "I only called because they told me one thing and you another so I wanted to see which was right." Then he says in a really nasty tone "you know what, now I'm not going to give it to you. The more I talk to you, I don't think I'm going to give it to you." I was shocked. I said "but you just said you would. I don't understand." I said I have the 3 months of Wellbutrin, and I'd like the klonipin to go with it. They said it's fine. He said "yes, the more I talk to you, I don't think I should give it to you. You should see someone else sooner rather than later. I said but with just the one month supply, I'd have to see someone in less than a month and I never saw you that often. He said "I'm not going to put anxiety down when that's not what we're using it for - we're using it for sleep. I said the mail order place knows that and they said it's fine and that that's what you should put." I didn't understand. He was very willing to lie and be sneaky about codes to the insurance company, but here, when I'm not asking anything unethical, just what the pharmacy is saying, he's acting nasty, with a mean tone, reversing himself in a punitive way when I didn't do anything. He said that's how it is, I'm not giving it to you, and you might not like it but that's how it is and you should see someone else very soon. He was acting like I was some desperate drug addict or crazy person.
I called my therapist, really upset and shocked at how I had been treated, so he, equally shocked, called him. The jerk told him the reason he wouldn't do it is since I'm ending with him, he doesn't feel comfortable giving me the 3 month supply of a controlled substance when I'm no longer his care (even though I had assured him I would start soon with someone else). But this is not the reason he gave me, and even later when my husband did come by for his final prescriptions, Dr. Lying-Moneygrubber said to him it was because I want him to put down anxiety which he in good conscience (as though he even had one) can't do.
My husband said he was quite upset about the way he Dr. No-Social-Skills-Nasty-Moneygrubber had spoken to me - my husband referred to it as "snotty and snippy." He then went really nuts with my husband, and that ended on bad terms too.
I was really upset about all of this.
Nowhere in any of this did he ever say to me (like on the final visit or any of the phone calls that it's been nice working with you or good luck, or anything like that - just told me to look into if PA would accept it, then me calling to say they would, him lying and saying they told him they wouldn't (doubt he ever called) then being angry that I called again (probably since I'm not supposed to ever doubt Dr. High-and-Mighty-Because-I-have-an-MD-Moneygrubber. And then the jerk gets mean and nasty on the phone, like his punishing me for the calls, saying he'll give it to me "to stop these calls" then saying no, now you can't have it (simply because I've called PA to clear up the confusion of the conflicting stories). I would appeciate any feedback.
poster:JennyR
thread:50572
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20001130/msgs/50572.html