Wilmont Kreis

Like Dr. Ryan, Dr. Kerry Berger is total fiction. He is an amalgam of bad characteristics I have seen in my career. Happily, very few doctors are like Kerry. Read More 

In THE LABYRINTH, Janique Halstrom is just such a luscious woman. She is also intelligent and a natural salesperson. She is also very well paid. Fortunately for society, Janique has scruples and these are eventually the undoing of Ariadne Health. Read More 

Many medical industries: pharmaceutical, surgical implants, home healthcare, etc. send representatives to physician offices to tell doctors about their products and why the patients need them. They are generally great salespeople, frequently bring lunches or other goodies and seem to be heavily populated by young, attractive and sexy ladies. Read More 

In THE LABYRINTH, Doctors Faragov and Calilov are probably competent and would like to be ethical physicians. But they have problems: their English skills are not good, they have no advanced (residency) training, and their visas and licenses are provisional. They are at Ariadne’s mercy if they want to stay in the U.S. Read More 

In America there are many physicians who have difficulty finding work. Perhaps they have had a license suspended. Maybe they are not fluent in English. Perhaps they have a drug problem, maybe they are just lazy. The industry can hire these folks as long as they have some sort of license and they can authorize treatment and devises for people in the nursing homes or even patients they have never seen. Medicare is a grand bureaucracy but sometimes not very careful. Read More 

Now the industry got smarter. They realized there were physicians who signed these forms readily without any scrutiny. These were the doctors they wanted. Soon they realized you could send documents to certain practitioners who would unknowingly sign for things they never ordered and even for patients they had never seen. Believe me, it happens! Read More 

Now the home healthcare industry had a new problem: getting physicians to do these forms. So they made them easier by filling them out before sending them to the doctor to sign. Now the doctor had the choice of reading this wordy document (often several pages of small print) or just signing the “damn thing” and sending it back. Read More 

How can this be?! In order for Medicare to pay for a service like home healthcare, it must be ordered by a physician and its indication (why it needed and what is the evidence) must be specifically documented. Once upon a time, the physician wrote a simple prescription, but as time went by, Medicare decided it was more prudent to get more specific and detailed. Now the simple prescription became various forms longer and more complicated with each passing year. Read More 

Do any of you have a story about an experience with home health care? Things that were provided that did not seem necessary or that seemed overly expensive, etc.? If you do, tell me about them, and we’ll try to address them—could be fun. Read More