Non-Compliant Patients and the AMA

This is a note traveling the e-mail forwarding loop that I believe is worthy of sharing - for those of you who don't have that 1 or 2 obnoxious friends who believe every e-mail is meant to be forwarding. ;-) FYI - It wasn't an obnoxious friend who shared this one with me, though this wasn't the first on in my inbox.  It was a friend who knows my interest in such topics.  And, this friend also sent me the most user friendly version of the e-mail.

****Begin Email*****
"The following is page 102 of 134 pages of the American Medical Association's Annual Meeting Report. Essentially, physicians are requesting a "code" enabling them to identify, label, and recognize "non-compliant" (READ: "autonomous") patients. (Bold emphasis added.)


SOURCE: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/475/refcomg.pdf

AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION HOUSE OF DELEGATES
Resolution: 710 (A-09)
Introduced by: Michigan Delegation
Subject: Identifying Abusive, Hostile or Non-Compliant Patients
Referred to: Reference Committee G

(J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD, Chair)

Whereas, Many patients are becoming more abusive and hostile toward physicians for many reasons not limited to the economy, increasing co-pays and deductibles, unreasonable expectations and demands, a lack of instantaneous cure, arrogance and/or the belief that they “own” their physicians; and

Whereas, There are decreasing numbers of physicians both in primary care and specialties especially in terms of access; and

Whereas, Increasing noncompliance with treatment can reflect negatively on physicians during black box audits by insurance companies and oversight governmental agencies; and

Whereas, Abusive, hostile, and noncompliant patients result in increasing office resources adding to office overhead and added stress on all of the office personnel, which can lead to potential ill health; and

Whereas, The stress of dealing with ungrateful patients is adding to the stress of physicians leading to decreased physician satisfaction; and

Whereas, Any complaint to any oversight investigative regulatory body leads to uncompensated expenditure of time, resources, and monies to defend physicians or the “guilty until proven innocent” principal; and

Whereas, Physicians need to own the data to simplify patient collection and identification to defend themselves as well as alert outside investigating agencies to the potential nature of the patient’s records; therefore be it

RESOLVED: That our American Medical Association ask its CPT Editorial Panel to investigate for data collection and report back at Annual 2010 meeting: 1) developing a modifier for the E&M codes to identify non-compliant patients and/or 2) develop an add-on code to E&M codes to identify non-compliant patients. (Directive to Take Action)

Fiscal Note: Staff cost estimated at less than $500 to implement.
Received: 05/06/09" *****end e-mail*****

Be ye not ungrateful, or you may find those physicians who are already impossible to communicate with getting even more impossible because of the Code 666 attached to your file - since you were ungrateful when you went to the last MD, who didn't do anything but empty your pocketbook.  It's a shame we can't all be sheep led to the slaughter I guess.  Another reason we just don't do MDs unless we need to save someone from bleeding to death or set a bone.