Feedback
Archive Index


Greg Stanley
President
Whitehall Management




Greg Stanley is President of Whitehall Management Services located in Phoenix, Arizona. Whitehall Management currently offers three seminars, the Financial Freedom Seminar, the Whitehall Advanced Seminar, and the Perpetual Practice Development Seminar. Greg makes all of the Whitehall Management seminar presentations and has now made seminar presentations to over 17,000 doctors and numerous other healthcare professionals over the past twelve years. Greg is a graduate of Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting. He has personally consulted with thousands of doctors on the problems that arise out of their accumulation efforts.

Mr. Stanley has had numerous articles regarding personal and business finances published in various professional periodicals. He has been actively involved in producing educational video and audio cassette programs for his seminar clients and is involved in many of the most powerful professional seminars as a guest speaker.

A Whitehall Management Seminar can be seen almost any weekend in numerous cities nationwide and remains the standard in the industry for providing a valuable and entertaining presentation.



Whitehall Management Seminars
Tentative 1996 Schedule

Saturday June 1
San Francisco, CA
Advanced

Saturday May 18
San Diego, Ca
Practice Dev.

Saturday May 18
Orlando, FL
Practice Dev.

Seminar dates subject to change.
Call The Whitehall Office
To verify dates and locations
before making travel arrangements.

Contact: Greg Stanley or Bill Godwin
Whitehall Management
P.O. Box 23482
Phoenix, AZ 85063
(602) 934-2108


Don't Join HMOs


Several years ago I heard a news item about a radio disc jockey in a major city who, as a joke, told everyone to get out their checkbooks and write a check for $20 and send it to his address at the radio station. He had done so many pitches for various charities that he knew all the verbiage that usually went into this type of ad, so he was able to make it sound very real and believable. The only difference between this ad and the ones he usually did for charities was that this ad did not mention who would benefit from the donation.

To everyone's amazement, checks began arriving at the radio station. Within one week they had received more than 4,000 checks for $20 made out to the radio station. Before the hoax had ended, nearly 20,000 checks had arrived. They returned all of the money of course, but a powerful point was made. We have been conditioned to respond in certain ways to a well-prepared plea for charity. I mention this story because of its parallels to HMOs current trend to successfully recruit dentists to their cause.

It would appear that HMOs have developed the ability to present membership in a way that stimulates a preconditioned response in the dentist. The appeals go something like this: "This is the way everything in healthcare is going." "If you don't get in now, you're going to be left behind." "Yes, you are going to have to work cheaper, but that is better than not having any patients." "It's discounted care but if you just lower your overhead a little, it will all work out." "You've already got the office and other overhead covered by your fee-for-service patients, so you're really making the same money on your HMO or discounted patients."

Of course, no thinking person would join a discounted healthcare organization if he or she honestly believed they could fill their practice with full fee-for-service patients. HMOs are counting on the conditioned response phenomenon. Once they get the herd of providers moving their way like so many cattle, they can easily get the upper hand on what once was a proud and profitable profession. After all, they brought medicine to its knees, why not dentistry?

Among my own clientele, I have seen medical specialists lose 60% of their income while seeing their work loads increase. The 1/8/95 issue of The Arizona Republic carried an article by Barbara Carton about physicians checking into emotional stress clinics/workshops at a cost of $5,000 each because of the pressures brought on by managed care. The article pointed out that these physicians were being driven like slaves by non-doctor overseers to see patients in less than fifteen minutes and perform as few tests and procedures as possible.

There are fundamental differences between medicine and dentistry that make HMOs (and for that matter any type of insurance) inappropriate for dentistry. In medicine, the threat of a $400,000 hospital bill makes the idea of paying for insurance seem logical. We don't see many dental bills reach that level. Dental insurance provides no financial security factor that really makes it essential.

In a time when everyone from the Federal Government to the national press is scrutinizing healthcare costs it is amazing to see that insurance companies have engineered a vehicle to dramatically increase their income and profits. That vehicle is the HMO. The 12/21/94 issue of The Wall Street Journal included an article entitled "HMOs Pile Up Billions In Cash, Try to Decide What To Do With It." It pointed out that the major HMOs in the U.S. have profited to such an extent that their coffers are bulging with billions in cash.

The article went on to say that HMOs have almost no operating costs and do little more than pair patients with doctors who are willing to work cheap. In other words, they are basically patient brokers who are ending up with the healthcare profits that used to go to the healthcare providers. Among the options for this record cash accumulation ($9.2 billion in cash and growing by $500,000 per day), the top HMOs are not considering lowering employer premiums or paying stockholders a dividend. They are instead considering bringing healthcare services, as they put it, "in-house"--taking greater control of the doctor-patient encounter to see if they can generate even further profits.

In this same article, James Todd, Executive Vice President of the American Medical Association was quoted as saying, "I have a real problem with the for-profit mentality of some health plans. When money is being removed from the healthcare system, I don't look upon that with favor. We would like to see the money recirculated and used for patient care." You don't have to read between the lines to see that the medical profession has been beaten by the HMOs. It has come out of the bargain with HMOs getting the money and the physicians getting the work and stress.

So why do dentists voluntarily choose to participate in this exploitation? I believe the real reason HMOs are gaining power is the fact that dentists would like someone else to bring them patients in large, secure quantities instead of having to make a living charming patients into buying larger cases and referring their friends. In the years I have served in dentistry, I have often heard predictions of dentistry dying because of everything from oversupply of dentists to technological breakthroughs that will leave us all unemployed. I don't believe that we can have it both ways. We can't expect to enjoy the entrepreneurial incomes of fee-for-service doctors and have the job security that we think membership in an HMO can provide.

Ken Terry, managing editor of Medical Economics, pointed this out in his 5/23/94 article, "When Health Plans Don't Want You Anymore." This cover story told of how nationwide, HMOs were cutting one in five physicians. It stated that HMOs had let physicians join freely so they could get accurate profiles of the doctors' treatment styles--the physicians who seldom ordered tests or surgeries were kept. The others were cut from the plans. In many cases the doctors being cut were literally losing their entire incomes as they had slowly converted their practices to serve the HMO patients.

The Wall Street Journal's 5/8/91 article entitled, "Rising Supply of Doctors May Be Bad Medicine for Health Costs" brought up the fact that, based on the number of medical students that will graduate in the coming years, the number of physicians will increase 22% by the year 2000. This will further weaken the bargaining position of the medical profession.

Dental Economics' recently published yearly practice survey showed dentistry posting a 7% revenue increase for the previous year. With people keeping their teeth longer and a programmed shortage of dentists coming into the profession, I cannot see why dentists would consider joining an HMO. Two of my ortho clients told me that HMOs in their communities are offering full ortho for $1,400. We have to keep in mind that the insurance industry is devoted to profits, not compassionate, high quality healthcare.

In light of all this, I suppose the most disturbing news of all was The Wall Street Journal's 1/3/95 article, "Don't Worry About the Doctors." The article said that the fee-for-service physicians who had not joined discounted health plans had managed to maintain their income even in the face of the managed care onslaught. In other words, even in medicine, to a great degree the fatal wounds of managed care have actually been self inflicted.

I can easily understand why HMOs would want dentists to work for free. What I cannot understand is why any rational dentist would agree to do so.

Feedback
Archive Index