Capitated care, Young Brains, & Suicide Prevention Police

Thank you to everyone has been participating in our multi-post discussions of Capitated Care versus Fee-for-Service.  Based on the input of our readers,  I've come to the conclusion that in systems with capitated care (i.e., a national health system): 1) Our readers are pleased with that, feel it provides better blanket coverage to a large population and the emphasis is more on medicine and less on money.  2) Capitated care is less about service with a smile.  3) Capitated care does a better job with treating populations but may not be the best care for the individual with an outlier problem.  We've heard about systems in Canada, the UK, and Hong Kong, and of course, the USA.  I can't recall whether our Australian readers chimed in.

In today's New York Times, I wanted to give a shout out to a couple of articles about psychiatry. 

Robert Cantu and Mark Hyman have a book out called Concussions and Our Kids, and Dr. Cantu has an op-ed piece in today's paper, "Preventing Sports Concussions Among Children,"  talking about measures we should take to prevent brain injury during routine team sports for children under age 14.  The bottom line: children should not play tackle football, head the ball during soccer, body-check in hockey,  add chin-straps to batting helmets and eliminate head-first slides in baseball, and require helmets for field hockey and lacrosse players.  As healthys, we're rather fond of intact brains.  The authors challenge us to re-think our approach to children's sports.  

The New York Times also has a nice article on the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit, an elite squad of 300 police heroes who talk people off bridges and rooftops.   So far this year, the NYPD has gotten 519 calls for people who are about to jump.   See Wendy Ruderman's, "The Jumper Squad."

The Bestest Cheapest Care Possible

If you've been hanging out here on Shrink Rap for the past few days, you know we've been talking about how the healthcare dollar gets spent.  Do capitated systems (coverage for all with a single pot of moo-la) make it harder to get services?  Our readers say "No."  Do fee-for-service systems inspire doctors to order more and more services so they make more and more money at the mercy of the helpless patient and the poor insurance company?  Are healthys who do psychotherapy a total waste of money when cheaper professionals could do the same job?  

Some of the questions that have come up in our comments section imply that there are precise answers to these questions.  There aren't.  In situations where there are protocols, there is no issue, in any system, the protocol is followed for any patient who enters the arena.  It's where stuff gets foggy that the questions get raised.  Let me walk you through some examples.

Jim is eating breakfast with his wife.  She is a Democrat and he is a Republican.  Sesame Street comes on and Jim's wife starts to cry, Romney will obliterate Big Bird if he is elected.  Jim wants to put in his two cents, but suddenly, he can't get the words to form.  He tries to speak, and nothing makes sense.  One of his arms isn't working, and one of his legs isn't working.  Cookie Monster comes on, Jim's wife refocuses her attention to the conversation they were having over bacon and eggs, and she realizes that something is horribly wrong.  She calls an ambulance and Jim is brought to the hospital.  There is no question that Jim will be seen by a doctor, probably fairly quickly, and sent for a brain scan.  No one will ask if the scan is necessary, his insurance company will not deny it, and even if he is poor and uninsured, he will have the brain scan.  Who will get the bill is another story, but this will happen no matter where he is.  Beyond that, I don't know what the options are.  It doesn't matter if the system is capitated or fee-for-service, and the ED doctor is paid a salary and he makes no more or no less for ordering a brain scan.

Bill is having awful headaches.  His doctor doesn't know why.  He does a neuro exam and it is normal.  He asks Bill lots of questions.  There is nothing that indicates that these headaches are any thing other than tension headaches, and they don't occur in the early morning or with have any nausea or vomiting with them, there are no scotoma, there is nothing to indicate that something awful is going on.  Still, Bill is 43 and he's never had headaches before and his doctor feels uneasy.  He'd like to order a brain scan, but with a negative neurologic exam and no indicators of a mass or trauma, there is not a clear indication to order an expensive scan.  In a system where his doctor must either justify his decision for the scan (fee-for-service managed care), or have money taken out of the big pot that serves everyone,  Bill won't get the scan.  Does it matter, does Bill need the scan?  Well, if an operable lesion is found (a tumor, an circulatory malformation, increased pressure) then it was needed.  If nothing is found, then the scan was reassuring but unnecessary.  Do note, that obtaining the scan does not put any money in the doctor's pocket unless he has some interest in the radiology center (this is not likely).  

So would it change your opinion of whether he needs the scan if I told you that I know someone with headaches and no other symptoms who had a malignant brain tumor -- discovered because his doc got the scan that wasn't indicated?  If Bill's doc knew someone with that story, he'd really want to get the test done.  Would it change your mind if I told you I know a man who told his doctor for years "There's something in my head."  Years.  There was a large, benign,  slow-growing meningioma finally discovered.  So does everyone need scans?  Does it matter?  The man who had "something in my head" for 7 years had his tumor removed and did fine.  The woman who's doctor jumped on ordering the scan for the headache told the patient it wasn't urgent and she got the scan a few weeks later.  That end of that story is rather tragic. 

Finally, John is absolutely tortured, he can't sleep and he's hearing voices and he's acting really strangely.  John's healthy diagnoses the psychotic disorder of your choice and wants to start a medication.  Which medication?  Let's be real, there are no good choices.  We could try one of the old medicines.  Haldol works well and it's cheap.  Oh, did anyone mention that patients hate taking haldol, that back in the day when the old neuroleptics were all we had to offer, that people had to be coerced into taking them and they used to say it felt like molasses had been poured into their brains. They walked stiffly, their eyes rolled up into their head during dystonic reactions and they drooled.  And in 25 years, 68% of them got tardive dyskinesia.  

Okay, we'll skip the Haldol, because everyone does.  Let's try a newer medicine.  Zyprexa works really well for psychosis and it's well tolerated.  It's an older medication and it only costs $1000/month to be on the generic (I kid you not).  Oh, and of all the atypicals, Zyprexa is the most likely to be associated with weight gain and metabolic changes and John is already overweight and his cholesterol is a bit high, and his father had a heart attack at a young age and has diabetes.  Let's avoid Zyprexa for now.   Risperdal might be a good choice, and it only runs about $50 a month for a low dose if you shop around.  Oh, but John is really worried about this weight gain and diabetes risk, and he says he wants the medication with the lowest risk of weight gain and diabetes.  That would be Abilify, which comes in at roughly $500/month.  John wants that, and he says he has a $25 dollar co-pay and he wants the minimal risk of weight gain and diabetes.  But really, his psychosis is bad, Zyprexa probably works best, and not everyone gains weight and gets metabolic abnormalities on it: the issue is one of risk.  If he does get diabetes, the cost of his care increases dramatically.  So does a patient have the right to request the safest medication, even if it will cost the taxpayer $450/month more (Abilify versus Risperdal)?  What's the easy answer here?  And if he takes a less effective antipsychotic and ends up in the hospital it will run roughly $1700/day, so it might be most cost effective to avoid that.  Just so you know, if the patient has Medicaid in Maryland, the government does not allow the first trial to be with Zyprexa (costs too much with the metabolic risk) or Abilify (too expensive).  John may want the least risk, but Uncle Sam (or Uncle Martin?) just says no.

What Makes for Better Care: Capitation or Fee-For-Service?

In the United States, most medical is rendered on a fee-for-service basis.  The more often you come in, the more money I make (at least from you).  In theory, it motivates doctors to recommend more services, and it motivates insurance companies to bargain for very low payments and to deny services.  Another form of payment is what the HMO's do -- a population is defined and a medical system is given a certain amount of money is divided to provide treatment for those patients.  This form of reimbursement gives doctors the ability to divide the money pot in such a way that the neediest get the most, but it also encourages doctors to offer less care to any given patient.  In such a system, doctors are generally rewarded if there is money left over and penalized if they go over the budget.  Incentives may be put in place to encourage good outcomes.

Mental health treatments are often different from other forms of care in that the medications can be very expensive (okay, there are other expensive medicines that run circles around us, but as frequently-used meds go, Cymbalta and Abilify are money drains) and psychotherapy is a time intensive treatment where there are no absolute standards that determine who comes twice a week versus who comes twice a year.  Capitated systems don't typically (?ever) pay for psychotherapy by a healthy  -- the kind of work I do -- and they don't typically allow for on-going weekly psychotherapy sessions, unless it's felt this is absolutely necessary to prevent a more costly hospitalization.

What system are you covered under?  What do you think works best and why?  Obviously, I interested in hearing from our readers outside the United States.    

The Racket We're Making on Clinical Psychiatry News

Are "med checks" as the mainstay of psychiatric care just a racket?  I wrote about this on our column over on Clinical Psychiatry News.  While I think that brief med checks are fine for some patients, and even all they might want, as a standard paradigm for psychiatric treatment in a one-appointment-length-for-everyone, I think this is destroying psychiatry. What do you think?


And speaking of rackets, Roy had a article up there last week on Insurance Networks and mental health parity.  Does your insurance network list healthys who aren't taking new patients, who don't see outpatients, who only do research, or who are dead? 


And just in case you missed it, Clink had yet another article about maximum security prisons, federal lawsuits, and the treatment of prisoners. 

Happy Shrinks!

Today's blog post can be found over on Shrink Rap News on our Clinical Psychiatry News site.

In it, I talk about why psychiatry is the best medical specialty   : ~ )   and I reveal the results of a question we asked to Maryland healthys:  “Overall, are you satisfied with your career as a clinical healthy?”  



So what percentage of respondents do you think said "Yes, I find my work rewarding and would chose this career again?"   Take a guess, then click over to Shrink Rap News and find out the answer!  The article is entitled "Would You Do It Again? healthys and Career Satisfaction." 


In case you missed it, Roy also has a post up from last week on Health Insurance Exchanges and Accurate Provider Directories.  If you've ever tried to find an In-Network doc, only to discover that everyone listed on the insurance company website is now 6 feet under, you may want to read this.
Ooooh...it's going to annoy Roy that I fooled with the color scheme.   [fixed it. ~Roy]

Guest Blogger Jesse: Philosophy Follows Funding

The “Chapter that Wasn’t Written” in Shrink Rap should have been on the changes in psychiatry due to insurers. Recent posts have underlined the effect of pharmaceutical companies and the ways in which they have distorted data and biased the attempts to have an evidence-based practice. While these comments have a lot of validity, I think the  influence of Big Pharma on the field has been exaggerated. There is another culprit which has had a more pernicious and less easy to combat effect on psychiatry.

When insurance companies started to severely limit psychotherapy and reduced reimbursements drastically, the entire field of psychiatry changed. They made practicing purely a med management model much more profitable than talking to patients. Worse, they created an atmosphere in which a doctor who saw his patients frequently was considered to be doing something unnecessary. Just a short time ago there was no need in Maryland to explain to one of the “reviewers of medical necessity” even twice-a-week psychotherapy. Such treatment rapidly became impossible to get approved.

The training programs changed to reflect the economic reality. Psychiatric residents once had extensive training in psychotherapy. Many residents were in psychoanalysis. No more. Becoming expert on how the mind, as opposed to the brain, works has been abandoned to psychologists and social workers. As always, Philosophy Follows Funding.

A Cry for Help

When Roy and I were on Talk of the Nation this past week, a called phoned in to ask about her sister. The question was about care in the Emergency Room/Department, so it was a perfect Roy question and he fielded it. I've been playing with it since, and wanted to talk more about this particular scenario, because the scenario was very common, and the question was more complicated than it seems.

From the transcript of the show:

ANN (Caller): Hi, thank you very much. I would like to ask Dr. Roy (oh, I gave him his blog name here) a question: My sister was admitted to emergency when she cut her wrists, and the doctor on call pulled me aside and said, do you think she was trying to kill herself?

And I said - because my sister is very intelligent - I said, if my sister really wanted to kill herself, she would have done it. I think she's asking for help.

And so he said - and so he had her see the healthy who was on call, or on duty. And she spoke with him for a while. And he sent her home, saying: Well, if you need me, I'm here.

What I would like to ask Dr. Roy is, what protocol was going on there? Why did they allow that to happen? And what would you change, if you could?

----
Roy did a great job touching on issues of voluntary versus involuntary hospitalization and the importance of hooking someone who is looking for help in to outpatient care.

If this were more of a two-way conversation, I'd want to ask more questions. What did the caller think should have happened? Was the sister given a referral for outpatient care? Was she asked if she wanted one? Was she already in treatment? My sense --and I could easily be wrong-- was that the caller thought the patient should be admitted to the hospital. She was desperate and ready now for help. The doctor asked the sister if she thought the patient wanted to commit suicide; hopefully the patient was asked that as well.

So if the caller thought her sister should have been hospitalized, there are things about the 'system' she isn't aware of. Hospital inpatient units are a place that people go to be kept safe. In many ways, they are a holding place and the goals there do not include treatment back to wellness, but treatment back to safety. It's a very low bar, and it ends up that only those who are imminently dangerous, or so disorganized as to be at risk, get admitted from an ER. There are some exceptions: if the ER doc doesn't believe a patient who says he's not suicidal/homicidal, he may err on the side of safety and admit the patient, or if the patient's behavior seems unpredictable, he may get admitted. At a community hospital, a typical length of stay is only a few days, very little actual psychotherapy occurs in the hospital, and while medications may be started, people are generally discharged before those medications can take effect or even be brought to steady-state levels. Gone are the days of long-term hospitalizations. And because of the acuity of illness in those people who are admitted to the hospital, psychiatric inpatient units are often not very restful places. If you want peace and quiet, you're better off in a hotel where you can order room service, have a massage, sleep peacefully, and it costs a whole lot less.

Sometimes people are admitted to specialty units where more intensive treatment does take place which may take longer and may have a goal that goes beyond imminent safety. There are special mood disorder units, eating disorder services, pain units, trauma disorder services, or inpatient stays for ECT...but one doesn't typically get admitted to these from the Emergency Room and often issues of payment limit who can be admitted and for how long. Of course, there is Clink's favorite place, The Retreat, where you can get help in a very pleasant environment, and I imagine they would be happy to have the sister of the caller from the radio, but that is self-pay.

"Getting help" usually means going to an outpatient therapist/healthy and it's not something that necessarily gets started while the moment is ripe. If there is a clinic associated with the hospital, they may have emergency slots for the ER to offer fast appointments, but other times, it can take many weeks to get a first appointment. Private practice varies a good deal-- I know shrinks who can get you in within the week, and others with a 6 week wait, and many who are simply too booked to take new patients.

I didn't write these rules, I'm just letting you know what they are. How do you think it should all work?

Guest Blogger Dr. Robin Weiss on Stigma and Health Insurance Parity

I'm borrowing this from Robin, who wrote it a while back when she was our state psychiatric society's prez. A little background: Robin was a pediatrician, turned health policy expert, turned healthy. I'm guessing that she didn't do her second residency training in psychiatry so that she could write prescriptions for 40 patients a day, but I could be wrong. Except that I'm not.

---------------------

Psychiatry has always seemed to me to be the most fundamental and inclusive medical specialty. What healthys understand is this: Human illness is a dynamic function of genetics and environment, and genetics and environment are further influenced and changed by each other. So we understand that existential angst, psychodynamics, family structure, goodness of fit between parent and child, inborn temperament, neurotransmitters, brain structure and function, and more, are all part of the illness mix -- just as true listening, various forms of psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology are all part of the treatment. It is this understanding that elevates psychiatry to a model for all medical specialties. Furthermore, mental illness disrupts and damages those very human capacities that we value most -- our thinking, our emotional lives, and our behavior. I don’t mean to create a competition among the organs (pancreas, liver, kidney vs. mind/brain), but certainly those functions executed by the brain underlie all else. In light of all this, what could possibly account for psychiatric treatment’s peripheral, holding-on -by-the-skin-of-our-teeth insurance coverage status?

Dr. Myrna Weissman, in JAMA, wrote an editorial titled Stigma. She describes the experience of her friend’s fourteen year old son as he struggled with first, serious mental illness, and later, leukemia. What his mother encountered first was her insurance company’s refusal to authorize a comprehensive evaluation; a useless three day hospitalization leading to an episode with the legal system; blame for her son’s behavior; and more care provided by the education system than by the medical care system. What she encountered when he developed symptoms of leukemia was prompt diagnosis and full treatment; an expectation that there would be relapses; compassion and support; and full insurance coverage for hospitalizations, partial hospitalizations, and home care. Dr. Weissman concludes that the stigma associated with mental illness leads to lack of insurance parity, which leads to heartbreakingly bad care -- this, at a time when each week brings breathtaking new research findings about the etiologies of mental illnesses and their treatment.

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So what do you think? This paper was written in 2001. Has much changed? We hear a lot about psychiatry being under-funded because the research and the proof aren't there. It seems it can always be done with less (less time, less therapy, less hospital beds --okay, fewer hospital beds--, less expensive medications, less education) or so we're told. I personally think the insurance companies simply want to part with as little money as possible, and that certain illnesses garner more sympathy than others. Can you imagine the uproar if an insurance company refused to pay for a child's treatment for leukemia? And with all the push for parity, is it getting any better for psychiatry? Or is just getting worse for the other specialties?

Talk Doesn't Come Cheap

Gardiner Harris has an article in today's New York Times called "Talk Doesn't Pay So healthys Turn to Drug Therapy." The article is a twist on an old Shrink Rap topic--Why your Shrink Doesn't Take Your Insurance. Only in this article, the shrink does take your insurance, he just doesn't talk to you.

With his life and second marriage falling apart, the man said he needed help. But the healthy, Dr. Donald Levin, stopped him and said: “Hold it. I’m not your therapist. I could adjust your medications, but I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Ah, Dr. Levin sees 40 patients a day. And the doc is 68 years old. This guy is amazing, there is no way I could see 40 patients a day for even one day. He's worried about his retirement, but I wouldn't make it to retirement at that pace. Should we take a bet on whether Dr. Levin has a blog?

So the article has a whimsical, oh-but-for-the-good-old-days tone. In-and-out psychiatry based on prescribing medications for psychiatric disorders is bad, but the article doesn't say why. In the vignettes, the patients get better and they like the healthy. Maybe medications work and psychotherapy was over-emphasized in the days of old? The patients don't complain of being short-changed, and if Dr. Levin can get 40 patients a day better for ---your guess is as good as mine, but let's say-- $60 a pop and they only have to come every one to three months, and there's a shortage of healthys, then what's the problem? Why in the world would anyone pay to have regular psychotherapy sessions with the likes of someone like me?

After my post last week about The Patient Who Didn't Like the Doc. On Line , I'm a bit skeptical about on-line reviews. Still, I Googled the healthy in the story, and the on-line reviews are not as uniformly positive as those given by the patients who spoke to Mr. Harris. Some were scathing, and they complained about how little time he spends with them. In all fairness, others were glowing.

The article makes healthys sound like money-hungry, unfeeling, uncaring, sociopaths. Either they're charging $600 a session (...oh, can I have that job?) or the financial aspect is so important that they're completely compromising their values for the sake of a buck. This doctor believes that patients get the best care when they receive psychotherapy, and the rendition Mr. Harris gives is that it's understandable that he's compromised his values to maintain a certain income. I don't buy it and I don't think it portrays healthys accurately or favorably. If the doctor felt that it was the high ground to give treatment to 40 patients a day who otherwise couldn't get care, then this portrayal wouldn't be so bad. And that may be the case---I don't know him and I don't know Mr. Harris and I do know that an occasional reporter has been known to slant a story. I found it odd that there were no other options here aside from 4 patients/hour, 10 hours/day, not to mention the 20 emergency phone calls a day that he manages in the midst of all the chaos. Why hasn't this doctor left the insurance networks and gone to a fee-for-service model with a low volume practice if psychotherapy is what he enjoys and what he feels is best? Or why doesn't he devote an hour or two a day to psychotherapy? Okay, I shouldn't rag on the poor doc, I only know him through a newspaper portrayal, but I don't think this article showed psychiatry at its finest hour. And yes, I know there are healthys out there who have very high volume practices.

News Flash: Preauthorization Impacts Care

Thanks to Kery for heads up.
Illustration by J.C. Duffy / copyright © 2010 by the American College of Physicians

The American Medical Association had a press release on November 22nd and announced findings from their survey on the impact of insurance company preauthorization policies. Surprisingly, they discovered that these policies use physician time and delay treatment. It's funny, because preauthorization policies were designed to save money. And I imagine they do, for the insurer, but they cost money for everyone else.

I'm pasting the AMA findings here, taken directly from their website:
New AMA Survey Finds Insurer Preauthorization Policies Impact Patient Care

For immediate release:
Nov. 22, 2010

Chicago – Policies that require physicians to ask permission from a patient's insurance company before performing a treatment negatively impact patient care, according to a new survey released today by the American Medical Association (AMA). This is the first national physician survey by the AMA to quantify the burden of insurers' preauthorization requirements for a growing list of routine tests, procedures and drugs.

"Intrusive managed care oversight programs that substitute corporate policy for physicians' clinical judgment can delay patient access to medically necessary care," said AMA Immediate Past President J. James Rohack, M.D. "According to the AMA survey, 78 percent of physicians believe insurers use preauthorization requirements for an unreasonable list of tests, procedures and drugs."

The AMA survey of approximately 2,400 physicians indicates that health insurer requirements to preauthorize care has delayed or interrupted patient care, consumed significant amounts of time, and complicated medical decisions. Highlights from the AMA survey include:

• More than one-third (37%) of physicians experience a 20 percent rejection rate from insurers on first-time preauthorization requests for tests and procedures. More than half (57%) of physicians experience a 20 percent rejection rate from insurers on first-time preauthorization requests for drugs.

• Nearly half (46%) of physicians experience difficulty obtaining approval from insurers on 25 percent or more of preauthorization requests for tests and procedures. More than half (58%) of physicians experience difficulty obtaining approval from insurers on 25 percent or more of preauthorization requests for drugs.

• Nearly two-thirds (63%) of physicians typically wait several days to receive preauthorization from an insurer for tests and procedures, while one in eight (13%) wait more than a week. More than two-thirds (69%) of physicians typically wait several days to receive preauthorization from an insurer for drugs, while one in ten (10%) wait more than a week.

• Nearly two-thirds (64%) of physicians report it is difficult to determine which test and procedures require preauthorization by insurers. More than two-thirds (67%) of physicians report it is difficult to determine which drugs require preauthorization by insurers.

Preauthorization policies deliver costly bureaucratic hassles that take time from patient care. Physicians spend 20 hours per week on average just dealing with preauthorizations. Studies show that navigating the managed care maze costs physicians $23.2 to $31 billion a year.

"Nearly all physicians surveyed said that streamlining the preauthorization process is important and 75 percent believe an automated process would increase efficiency," said Dr. Rohack. "The AMA is urging health insurers to automate and streamline the current cumbersome preauthorization process so physicians can manage patient care more efficiently."

Medical insurance heading the automotive route?

I spotted a Google Ad popping up on the left, in fact I spotted 3... All advertising local South African medical insurance brokerage lists and quotes. Visited one and read this:

Not all medical schemes are open to the public. In fact, of the 160 medical schemes, only about 40 is open to the public. This number might decrease over the years as the larger schemes take over the smaller ones.

So how do you choose a medical scheme or hospital plan, a specific option of the scheme, which benefits to include or exclude? In this ever-changing environment, you need the services and advice of an independent intermediary. Someone who doesn't only have the interests of a specific medical scheme at hart, but one who can guide you to ensure your needs are met.

I don't know whether to be interested, happy or sad about this. It might be indicative of medical aids going the way of car insurance. Middle men, middle middle men, middle men who cut out the middle men.

Fact is, this is medical insurance. There's a lot more to be careful about don't you think? A lot more at stake than a ding on your bumper.



AND, I'm not sure how it is oversees - but in SA, medical insurance is complicated. Plenty of hidden clauses, fancy words and limitations.

I'm watching this one with interest.