My Own Dr. Phil

Dr. Phil is a friend of mine. No, not that Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil Cristin (not his real last name) has been one of my closest friends since we played T-ball together after school in second grade. I always thought I was the smarter one, but I grew up into the glass industry and Phil became a doctor. Go figure. Today, he runs one of those local make-an-appointment or walk-in places right in the center of town. Whenever I need a doc, I go to Phil. When he needs a new windshield, he calls me.

The flu hit me pretty badly a few weeks ago and I went to see Dr. Phil in his professional capacity. The receptionist told me I hadn’t been there as a patient for nearly four years. (I was proud of being so healthy.) She told me to have a seat and the good Doc would be with me as soon as possible.

While sitting in the waiting room, I noticed a lot had changed in four years. First was the sign-in sheet. It was numbered and you had to sign in with your name and the time you had arrived. The nurse filled in the column with a time when you were discharged.

I noticed that almost everything in that office revolved around the sign-in sheet. Phil himself came out to look at it a few times while I waited, as did several of the nurses and other staff. The receptionist kept filling in and recording numbers.

The second thing I noticed was the change in procedures. I used to go into an examining room and have my blood pressure taken by the nurse, then Phil would come in and I’d describe my symptoms and he fix me up, give me a prescription or whatever and I’d be on my way. One time, I had an ear infection and he had to do something called “lavage” it and that took him almost an hour, but otherwise, I’d generally have Phil’s attention for about 30 minutes or so.

Not anymore. This time one lady in white took my vitals and another wrote down what was bothering me. She asked a few questions and put them on a sheet, and then a third escorted me into an examining room where I waited for nearly 15 minutes before Phil arrived. While I had spent more than 30 minutes in the exam area, he ended up spending no more than five minutes with me. I got my script and left.

Last week we got to catch up a bit at our kids’ basketball game. One good thing about Phil is that he always let’s me give it to him. “Phil,” I said, “what’s the deal with that sign-in sheet in your office? Why are you all so obsessed with it? And how come I only rated four minutes of your time?”

Phil got a real sad look on his face, like I hadn’t seen since Mary Agnes Ilaterria broke up with him in high school. “Oh,” he said, “a lot has changed. We get paid so little by insurance companies for patient visits that I have see at least 110 patients a day just to cover my overhead. That doesn’t include the time I have to spend on the phone fighting with them to cover procedures or medicine my patients need.”

I did some quick math. “Phil, that’s like a patient every four minutes.” ”Exactly,” he said. “It’s all different. I used to do blood work in the office, but I had such a hard time getting reimbursed for it, we stopped doing it. Practicing medicine today is not as much about patient care as it should be. Did you know a doctor’s average income has been going down every year for the past ten? Dentists now have a higher average income per patient than doctors, because the insurance industry is not nearly as insinuated into dentistry as they are in medicine. It’s depressing and demoralizing and it’s killing patient care.”

Phil told me he was thinking of getting out of medicine all together. “I want to do something where I control destiny and don’t have to fight with insurance companies all day. Maybe I’ll come work for you in the glass business,” he said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

Watching Washington

I don’t live in Washington State, but I have sure been watching the fight going on there in the legislature the past few weeks (CLICK HERE for related story from glassBYTEs.com™). It’s been quite an education.

From watching the hearings, it’s easy to see that the insurance lobby is big and powerful and full of lobbyists with fancy suits. Heck, the chairman of the committee was even calling the lobbyist by his first name. They looked pretty chummy. Probably play a lot of golf together too. On the surface, you might think that there’s no chance for the auto glass lobby to be victorious. Well, your wrong. The Independents have already won. Here’s why:

1 - The insurance lobby had to spend big bucks fighting this thing. They had to use valuable resources, time, energy, people and bucks to work to squash an attempt by the legislature to do the right thing. Even Safelite sent a hired gun out there to fight the bill.

2 - There’s an old saying in politics: when you’ve thrown everything you got and nothing sticks, confuse the issue. Well, that’s what these insurance fat cats have had to do in this case. In the end, they tried to confuse the issue by saying passing a bill to allow consumer choice would result in steering, which is bad for the consumer. Funny, Mister Insurance-miester, I guess steering is only okay as long as you are the one doing the steering.

3- The independents have grouped together around the cause quickly and effectively. Using grassroots work locally, they created quite a campaign in a short amount of time.

Insurers like to paint this as a “big chain vs. mom-and-pop” issue. What they, and their legislators, never get is that it is a quality issue. If you have the appropriate insurance and meet their criteria, any network will put you on their list. They have no idea how well you install glass, they don’t know if you are an escaped felon, they don’t know if you are doing drugs or other acts, they don’t know much about you. Mostly all they know is that you’ll do it for their price. The independents have been screaming for years that you get what you pay for. Who installs your windshield is as much a safety issue as who takes out your gall bladder. How’d you like your insurance company to send you a doctor they don’t know much about (except that they’d do the surgery for what the insurance company will pay)? More on this next time.

P.S. By the way, a few of you have asked if I worked for a urethane manufacturer. The answer is no. Never have. Never will. When the editors asked me to come up with a name, I thought it’d be a good one, but no, I’m not one of them. I’m one of you.