The official government site listing specialties and physicians in them to allow us to be rated (or be "berated") does not include my specialty- FAMILY MEDICINE under "F".
It does list it in a bundle to be found under "P" where you'll see "Primary Care, General Practice and Family Medicine". Primary Care is not a specialty. Why would a non-specialty be listed on their pop-up list under"specialties"? Why can't they get this right?
Check it out: Go to http://www.medicare.gov/default.aspx then search for Physician Compare, where you can enter a zip code and click on their "specialty" list. I scroll down the list looking after Emergency Medicine for my specialty and don't find it. Medicare operatives don't know the name of the specialty that is NUMBER ONE IN ANNUAL MEDICARE ENCOUNTERS. FAMILY MEDICINE IS NUMBER ONE!
Annoyed, I scroll a lot further and find Primary Care, General Practice and Family Medicine as one, bundled listing. Way to diss us and try to push us aside Medicare. I click on that disappointing selection and find my father's name: Arthur Jonas, MD (he was never a physician) after the words Family Practice. The Medicare people don't list me by the name my patients and everyone else knows: A. Patrick Jonas, MD.
They don't respect Family Medicine enough to list it separately, they don't know that there is no specialty called Family Practice, and they can't even get my name right for patients to match the Medicare search list with my listing everywhere else on the internet and in the yellow and white pages.
Other than that, they may be awesome, since they are giving people employment, but their misnaming specialties and mis-listing and mis-naming physicians may cause problems for the taxpayers and consumers they are supposed to serve.
Wake up Medicare. Honor number one by recognizing our identity. We are the answer to the question. How do you "bend the healthcare cost curve downward"?
"...and find my father's name: Arthur Jonas"
ReplyDeleteI forget what my first initial stands for too.