In other words, she wants a doc to accept the responsibility for signing off on her charts - and spend one day in ten in her clinic - while she chooses to limit her practice to Medicaid and "low income" female patients.
Maybe she is a fine person, but this kinda sucks as a business model. No wonder she can't get anyone. And she does claim that "It's a business".
I don't know whether I mentioned this, but I had a customer in eastern AR who was a NP and had gone into private practice under some kind of arrangement like this. She had a doc in Little Rock who was "associated" with the practice. She had been on the billing system I wrote for years and had built up a pretty good practice in the small town she was located in, and I assume the patients liked her. I always had the sense some of them might not fully comprehend the difference between the NP and the physician. She was pursuing a doctorate in Advanced Practice Nursing, or something like that.
Last year she spent a lot of money with me to get a new billing system and EHR system installed. Around the time we were working over there, I heard someone in another town refer to her as the "diet pill lady". I had been under the impression there were heavy restrictions on what they could prescribe but I'm not sure why I thought that.
Late in December last year I got a phone call from her office manager and was told she would be shutting her practice down in January. Really? As it turned out, she had been arrested by local officials for being a bit too free with some medications, and I never fully understood the deal, but she had agreed to a license suspension/closing down her practice for, I believe, two years.
I have wondered whether the "associated doctor" ended up with any exposure on this. I think whatever association she may have had was long since forgotten. I remember at one point the LR doctor would go over once a week or something like that. My sense is she hadn't visited there is a very long time.
If they're going to allow NPs to do this, I think some kind of real supervision ought to be required. In some of these tiny towns in the middle of nowhere, I can understand it may be tough to get a doctor to practice there. But the public doesn't always realize who they're dealing with. Like you I'm not a big fan of government regulation but there needs to be some standards or something in place when the public might be confused, IMO. |
