They can spend as much time as they want with the patient. The insurance simply caps how much is billable.
Comment on Why are doctors so hands off and unhelpful in the USA?
Holyginz@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoInsurance companies have control over what the doctors can do and over their schedules. They are only allowed to spend certain amounts of time with patients or they get in trouble. All the doctors I’ve talked to hate this. Blame insurance companies and the hospitals for prioritizing profit, not the doctors.
Avatar_of_Self@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hazor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes, but to clarify: the time constraints are imposed by for-profit healthcare businesses trying to optimize billable time because insurance will only reimburse for so much time, rather than being imposed by the insurance companies directly. (It’s generally not quite as silly in the non-profit sector.) I work in healthcare in the US: we all hate how it works. The system sucks and it interferes with the quality of care that can be provided, leaving patients worse off just so that greedy can be fed. It’s just asinine that anyone who has no medical knowledge/training is making decisions about how patient care can be implemented, especially where there’s a profit motive involved. We really need to pivot to single-payer or national healthcare system, and abolish for-profit ownership of hospitals.