11/22/2024    Charles Morelli, DPM

My Surgical Experience as a Patient (Ivar Roth, DPM, MPH)

Charles Morelli, DPM

I'd like to echo Dr. Roth's sentiment and
experience when it comes to the fact that "the
medical billing rip-off is rampant in medicine and
podiatry". Yes, every profession has their bad
actors, but sometimes you come across a with a
story that makes you shake your head. I'll try to
be brief.

A patient was seeing the same podiatrist every 6
weeks, for over 22 years. He was treating her for
a chronically ingrown nail, was cutting the corner
of her nail, charging her the $25.00 co-pay and I
imagine also billing her insurance carrier. She
called one day for an appointment and asked to be
seen as she was in pain, and felt it was an
emergency. According to the patient, no matter how
hard she pleaded, she could not be seen and this
angered her. She sought the services of another
podiatrist, and landed in my office.

When she presented with her problem of a painful
ingrown nail, she asked me if I could treat her
ingrown nail so she could feel better. I then
discussed other options with her and said that I
could do a procedure that could potentially make
this go away forever (chemical matrixectomy). She
looked at me as if I had three heads and was
amazed that this was even a possibility, as she
had never been given this option. I performed the
procedure. The patient was happy and I have never
seen her since.

As Dr. Roth said, "Unfortunately, this treatment
was about making money first and the patient last.
It is truly unbelievable that there are docs out
there ripping off not only the system, but their
patients, and making their patients suffer at the
expense of making an almighty dollar. Truly
listening to this patient made me disgusted about
the ethics of some of the younger doctors out
there in practice."

Let’s remove the word "younger" from Dr. Roth's
last sentence.

Charles Morelli, DPM, Mamaroneck, NY

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