THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409160257
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
``Hello, my name is Dr. Carideo. What brings you here?'' a Chesapeake physician asked a patient who had come to his South Battlefield Boulevard office for the first time.
Dr. Louis N. Carideo hoped the man would say he was there because he had heard he would receive good care. But the patient had a different answer.
``Well,'' he said, ``you're on the list.''
The man had been seeing another doctor, but because of a change in insurance arrangements, he had been forced to make a change. Dr. Carideo happened to be associated with the appropriate insurance plan; he was on the right ``list.''
The situation has become all too common.
The relationship between patient and physician used to be one of personal choice. More and more, it's become a business decision made by a third party, whose interest is primarily financial.
Dr. Carideo doesn't think it ought to be this way. Neither do more than 70 other local physicians who signed a statement deploring what they see as ``corporate takeover of medical care in Tidewater.''
Lobbyists bankrolled by big health-care conglomerates have managed to convince some politicians in Washington that America's health care system is working fine just the way it is. But can that be true when large, impersonal corporations have inserted themselves between patients and their doctors?
The citizens of Chesapeake are still stinging over the bid two years ago by Sentara Health System to obtain control of Chesapeake General Hospital, an institution built from scratch from their own money, labor and loving support. They rallied together to turn aside that threat.
Now, local physicians have begun to suspect an even more insidious takeover may be in progress, an effort to buy not mere buildings and equipment, but access to patients themselves.
Sentara nearly cinched a deal to provide health insurance to city employees and was negotiating with the administration of the local hospital to do the same. If Sentara could gain control of the health care of Chesapeake's first- and second-largest employers, it might be only a matter of time before the corporation is the one to decide which patients would be allowed to go to which doctors.
This possibility worries the physicians who signed Dr. Carideo's declaration of concern, and it should worry all of us who believe that decisions about medical care are best made locally and personally. by CNB