Interview with Dorothy Cantor
The Independent Practitioner (IP): Adoption of the Patient Bill of Rights was a monumental achievement. How would you suggest that practitioners use the bill?
Dr. Cantor (DC): The Bill of Rights will be available in poster and brochure form from APA. Practitioners can display the poster in their offices and distribute the brochure to their patients, friends, families, neighbors, etc. Further, individual practitioners can submit the Bill of Rights to their local newspapers for publication, with their own introductions and comments attached. Wide circulation will help develop an informed public which will then begin to demand from their insurance carriers that their rights be recognized.
IP: Psychologists already work under three sets of regulations: state ethical codes, state licensing boards, and the APA ethical code. How does the Patient Bill of Rights supplement those other regulations?
DC: The Bill of Rights is not an ethical code, in the sense that the APA ethical code or those of state associations or licensing boards are. However, it can serve as a means of self-advisement an guidance for practitioners.
IP: What legal force, if any, does the Patient Bill of Rights have?
DC: Since the Bill of Rights has not been adopted into any legislation, it has no legal force. If the President's commission on Health Care, on which one of the Summit presidents (Beverly Malone, R.N, Ph.D.) serves, were to adopt the document and Congress were to pass it into law, it would have legal force nationally. Even if the first were to happen, it is not likely that Congress would just pass it in its entirety.
However, such an action on the part of the commission would certainly greatly enhance the likelihood that business, insurers and managed care companies would pay serious attention to the document and its principles. State legislatures, which are currently considering over 1000 bills dealing with the regulation of managed care, might be more willing to grapple with he Bill of Rights as part of that trend.
IP: How can practitioners use the Patient Bill of Rights to protect patients from managed care?
DC: When practitioners are put in the position of having to violate the Bill of Rights in order to secure payment for their patients, they can write and protest, citing the Bill of Rights as their rationale. Managed care companies, when pushed, will frequently capitulate. However, the complaining practitioner does run the risk of being sent fewer patients and/or being removed from a panel. Patients who have seen the Bill of Rights can use it to confront their carriers regarding violations of their rights.
We'll have more to report to IP readers after the next Summit meeting.