FP Report -- May 1999
Rep. Greg Ganske, M.D. (center), and his wife, family physician Corrine Ganske, M.D., talk with AAFP Board Chair Neil Brooks, M.D., before reporters arrive at the press conference on AAFP's support for Ganske's bill.Patient rights bill gains AAFP support
It was a "first," and it featured the unlikely pairing of a plastic surgeon and a family physician.
But there they were: Rep. Greg Ganske, M.D., R-Iowa, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and AAFP Board Chair Neil Brooks, M.D., of Rockville, Conn., on Capitol Hill March 24, announcing AAFP support for Ganske's Managed Care Reform Act of 1999.
"I think the relationship between a doctor and a patient is very, very important," Ganske told a room full of reporters. "And what we're talking about is open communications -- the ability to maintain trust between a physician and a patient. Aspects of my bill deal with that."
Ganske sounded pleased, and he probably was. The bill he'd crafted, H.R. 719, was going to be introduced in the House just a few hours later, and it suddenly had the weight of 88,000-plus Academy members behind it. The Academy was pleased, too: The Ganske bill was the first patient rights legislation it had ever supported.
Reasons? As Brooks told reporters, Ganske's legislation "achieves a good balance of protection for the patient and freedom for doctors to practice good medicine. The bill has all the points important to improving health care quality for American families, which, taken together, provide the basics of good, comprehensive reform."
More specifically, Brooks said, the bill includes such elements as a prohibition of gag clauses, compromise on HMO liability, and formation of internal and external review processes.
Ganske's bill also includes a physician-centered definition of "medical necessity." As an example of the need for such a definition, Brooks told reporters about a patient suffering from a herniated disk. The health plan called for a month of bedrest and analgesics, but the problem and the patient's pain were severe. It took Brooks two weeks to convince the health plan to allow surgery.
The reporters were listening and scribbling. Their stories appeared in publications such as Physician's Weekly, National Journal's Congress Daily, Des Moines Register, Hartford Courant and the Bureau of National Affairs' Health Care Policy Report.
By Todd Simchuk, associate editor
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department. Copyright © 1999 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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