Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Half of Doctors Listed as Serving Medicaid Patients Are Unavailable, Investigation Finds - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — Large numbers of doctors who are listed as serving Medicaid patients are not available to treat them, federal investigators said in a new report.

"Half of providers could not offer appointments to enrollees," the investigators said in the report, which will be issued on Tuesday.

Many of the doctors were not accepting new Medicaid patients or could not be found at their last known addresses, according to the report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. The study raises questions about access to care for people gaining Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

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The Accidents of Psychoanalysis - NYTimes.com

In the aftermath of what we shrinks call "August" — a euphemism for the acute clinical moments that our patients experience while we're away for the standard three to five weeks of vacation — I found myself reflecting on a series of physical accidents that befell too many of my patients during my break not to note.

If two patients fall down stairs, another is involved in a pedestrian accident, one more falls off her bike and yet another suffers severe burns, what am I to make of this? Was it coincidence? Or were their mishaps somehow a continuation of their work with me in analysis?

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