United health care
 

Just wondering if anyone else is getting calls from UHC about having tests done. Telling you the patient they work hand in hand with your doctor and you need this done and then say because of this or that. Even when my doctor requests or tells me to do a test I don't always do. If I think I need it I will. I go every six months get blood work am on very little medication Soooo what is going on that they are calling

No calls to me
 

Been with UHC three years. Have never received such calls.

We haven't received a call like that, but it would not be unusual for the insurance company to do so, especially as a reminder for colonoscopy, mammography or bone densitometry.

As far as you only getting the tests that YOU think are needed, I congratulate you on an amazing sense of intuition. I wasted my time on 4 years of pre-med, 4 years of medical school, 3 years of Internal Medicine residency, and all kinds of board certifications and 35 years experience so that I knew what tests were appropriate to order. I'm sorry to hear I could have skipped all that and just gone with, what? gut instinct??? psychic ability????. Please note, there is no "American Association of Amateur Physicians"

I'm laughing. Does that mean there is no Dr. Google either?:confused:

Well said, Let me repeat that;

I received a call last year for a diabetic eye test. They said it's done at your local Villages Office and they recommend it for anyone with diabetes. Since I have diabetes type 2, I went for the test which took only a couple of minutes at my local Pinellas Villages Medical Office.

You should have that test done every year when you have your annual visit with your ophthalmologist.


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But doesn't AARP stand for American Association of Retired Physicians?



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We have UHC, I am guessing that whomever called you was fishing for customers. You can confirm by called UHC, look at your card for the number.

When a doctor recommends a test or procedure, how do you know that he/she is not just trying to protect against a possible malpractice lawsuit? Also, I don't think that some doctors fully understand the harm to the patient caused by worry and anxiety regarding medical tests and procedures. I think the patient needs to use some judgement when deciding what recommendations to follow.

"He who doctors himself has a fool for a patient"

"doctor told me to stop smoking cigars" So I changed doctors."

doctor, doctor, doctor when i do this it hurts. "then stop doing this

You can't be serious. But to answer the question, you don't. The more litigation in a geographic area and the higher risk of a specific specialty, the more likely a test will be ordered. This is a huge problem, costing anywhere from 300 to 750 BILLION per year just for the defensive practice of medicine.

Patient A comes to my office with 1 day of a headache radiating from his occipital region to his forehead. He has no neurologic signs, he gets temporary relief with Tylenol, he has been under stress lately, and I have a 25 year relationship with him. I tell him he has a muscle tension headache, continue Tylenol, use some gentle heat on his neck and some ben gay, and call me if it isn't gone in 3-4 days. My malpractice risk is close to 0.

Patient B has exactly the same presentation, but goes to the ER. He has no relationship with the ER physician, this is viewed as a single, isolated encounter, and he is a high malpractice risk specialty. That patient is going to have a CT scan or MRI. Is this the "wrong" test? No, but it is not necessary to make the diagnosis. The scan will show nothing, and in the unlikely case that there is an abnormality, it has absolutely nothing to do with his headache, just an incidental finding.

Now let's say that patient B went to the only ER physician that does not order a scan in this situation. Four months later the patient develops some loss of vision in his left visual field. A MRI show he has a 4 cm astrocytoma of his right occipital lobe. Do you think this patient goes back to the ER doc and thanks him for saving his insurance co. a few dollars? Or do you think he finds a lawyer? Even though this brain tumor had nothing to do with his headache 4 months earlier, this is pretty much a guaranteed losing case for the ER doc. No physician ever won an award for NOT ordering a test!

Now, everything above is just a medicolegal argument, driven by a lack of tort reform and frankly too many lawyers. But this is not the argument that you and another poster has put forth. Your argument is that YOU have the education and judgement to know whether a test is TRULY necessary, whether it is ordered for legal protection or to make $$$ or if the doctor is just weak. If you have that ability, great---proceed at your own risk. Maybe we don't really need the doctor, we could just put out a Chinese Food menu of tests and treatments and you can choose one from column A and two from column B.

I know what you were saying, but ignoring professional medical advice is a dangerous game. If you don't trust your physician to order those tests that are in YOUR best interests, not HIS, perhaps you need a new MD.

End of rant.

I have gotten phone calls from UHC wanting to review my prescriptions, or talk to a nurse etc. These are benefits they tout to Medicare Advantage customers and are farmed out to third party companies. After I tell them that is what I have a doctor for, I block their phone numbers.

Welcome to the 21st century---you have just come up against the "team approach" to health care. In the old days there was you and your doctor. Period. Then we had the introduction of subspecialists. This was followed by PAs and NPs. Now we have a whole array of people who want to take part in your health care. Physical therapists, respiratory therapists, nurses, social workers, patient advocates, grief counselors, occupational therapists, dieticians, diabetic teaching nurses, pharmacy consultants, patient management nurses and on and on. The reality is that the scope of treatment and the regulatory requirements can no longer be managed by the doctor alone. And lest I forget, the newest addition to the team, the health care navigator to help you get through the system they created.

The thing about the UHC MA calls is that Villages Health (which now is UHC MA) already provides a "team".

Villages Health has their own health care navigators and other support staff. When my wife was in the Villages Hospital the VH navigator and the VH hospitalist, and her VH specialist all stopped by to see her and would have set up social or other services if she needed them. Her VH PCP and VH specialist spent time working out a way to manage a problem she had (... it was successful :clap2:) All had access to her health records without needing some kind of HIPPA permissions and wait to get the records.

The VH navigator also followed up with phone calls and was very helpful with some questions she had. And the VH navigator had access to my wife's health records which made it much easier to answer questions about prescriptions.

And it always easy to get a quick response, even for mundane questions, via the Village Health portal or phone.

So why is UHC always calling to provide services that they are already paying Villages Health to provide?

The real issue I see with these UHC phone calls is that it is impossible to tell if they are scams fishing for personal info or not. The first thing they do is to ask you for a bunch of personally identifying data that you should never give to someone who just cold calls you like UHC is doing.

And worse is that by doing these cold calls it is "training" (operant conditioning???) people to accept cold calls like this.

There are lots of phone fishing scams like this going on these days and some of them have been spectacularly successful.