eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI Care

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drsclafani
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eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI Care

Post by drsclafani »

SHOULD HOSPITALS SCRAP PARKING FEES?
EDITORIAL SAYS CHARGE HINDERS ACCESS TO CARE
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November 29, 2011
Do some hospitals provide parking-centered care instead of patient-centered care? An editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) this week makes a case for abolishing hospital parking fees, arguing that they limit access to care.
According to the journal's interim Editor-in-Chief Rajendra Kale, some patients have no choice but to drive to hospitals and park in their lots, which can charge by the hour, creating an "avoidable stress to patients who have enough to deal with."
Kale suggests that these fees also can interfere with clinical consultations. For example, "some patients (who have often waited several weeks to see a doctor) try to end a consultation abruptly when they realize that they will have to pay for an additional hour for parking."
According to Kale, parking fees likely account for only 1% of total hospital revenue, a sacrifice hospitals can make to "facilitate reasonable access to health services without financial or other barriers" under Canadian law.
However, Ontario Hospital Association CEO Tom Closson says the fees provide critical funding for hospitals. For example, he says $230 million is raised each year from parking fees in Ontario (CMAJ, 11/28; Brennan, Toronto Star, 11/28).
is this what is considered "a stress to patients" and is this what they consider "a limit to access to care"? Where is the editorial on venous stenosis as a stress to patients. what about the lack of access to ccsvi care in Canada?
Last edited by drsclafani on Tue Nov 29, 2011 10:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Salvatore JA Sclafani MD
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Hooch
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by Hooch »

Hear hear Dr S. You see what we are dealing with up here!
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by Cece »

Parking fees are terribly minor compared to what people with CCSVI are up against!!
At least there are excellent options in the US now for Canadians. And change will come.
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by drsclafani »

Cece wrote:Parking fees are terribly minor compared to what people with CCSVI are up against!!
At least there are excellent options in the US now for Canadians. And change will come.
true, there are at least options, but not for all on either side of the International Border.

While CCSVI treatment is not illegal in the US, governmental restrictions are no different from the canadian from a financial point of view. Those who are most in need rely upon governmental sponsored insurance and I dont see any difference between the canadian government position and the american government position. "It's investigational so we won't pay."

At least in Canada it appears that the government may sponsor research investigation rather than just say this is investigational and we wont pay.
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DougL
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by DougL »

parking is a big issue in Ontario hospitals.

however, I don't think it limits access to care
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Post by Cece »

MS is a particularly inhumane disease. I would like to see every person, everywhere, who is a candidate for CCSVI treatment receive that treatment.

I know of many people who have had the procedure done in the last year, covered by Medicare or Medicaid, so at least they got theirs in before the window closed. If the way to re-open that window involves randomized controlled trials, then we need those underway, and Canada is doing right in sponsoring trials. We just need it done well and done fast.
madendj

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Last edited by madendj on Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Cece
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by Cece »

And man, whose heav'n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn, -
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!
- Robert Burns, 1784
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JohnAm
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by JohnAm »

I can't help myself here...

"From the London Times: A well-Planned Retirement
A perfect example of government mismanagement

Outside England’s Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years. It’s parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant, The fees were for cars (£ 1.40), for buses (about £7).
Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day off work, he just didn’t show up; so the Zoo Management called the City council and asked it to send another parking agent.

The Council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the Zoo’s own responsibility.
The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee.
The City Council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the City payroll.

Meanwhile, sitting in his villa in somewhere on the coast of Spain or France or Italy… is a man who’d apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own, and then, had simply begun to show up every day, to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about £560 per day – for 25 years.

Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over 7 million pounds… and no one even knows his name."

somebody heard of someone calling something a perfect crime...? ;)
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by Cece »

Oh that is too much. LOL.
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by NHE »

JohnAm wrote:I can't help myself here...

"From the London Times: A well-Planned Retirement
A perfect example of government mismanagement

Outside England’s Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years. It’s parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant, The fees were for cars (£ 1.40), for buses (about £7).
Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day off work, he just didn’t show up; so the Zoo Management called the City council and asked it to send another parking agent...
Perhaps the perfect crime is creating the perfect myth.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/clever/carpark.asp

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/humor/ ... endant.htm
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by Cece »

"Interestingly, in December 2009, a Brooklyn man broke into a closed city-owned garage, opened it, and began charging people for parking. He was chased off the site the next day by police, who subsequently tracked him via the DNA he left on a soda can. The man now faces charges of burglary and criminal impersonation."

So much for that as a CCSVI fund-raising idea!
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Post by drsclafani »

Cece wrote:MS is a particularly inhumane disease. I would like to see every person, everywhere, who is a candidate for CCSVI treatment receive that treatment.

I know of many people who have had the procedure done in the last year, covered by Medicare or Medicaid, so at least they got theirs in before the window closed. If the way to re-open that window involves randomized controlled trials, then we need those underway, and Canada is doing right in sponsoring trials. We just need it done well and done fast.
cece
let me clarify.
Medicare and medicaid never approved the procedure. patients received and doctors performed the procedure and billed medicare and medicaid. When CMS finally got around to reviewing those procedures, it disallowed them on the grounds that "angioplasty of the veins of the neck in patients with ms was investigational."

Those patients and those doctors were then required to return the money that CMS compensated them with. Since most doctors were the ones who received the money, they are responsible for returning it. It is up to each physician to then seek compensation (or not) from the patients themsellves. We at American Access decided to absorb the loss and did not bill patients.

I understand there may be physicians who continue to bill medicare. They do this at their own risk. Patients assume the same risks.

S
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Re: eliminating parking fees won't increase access to CCSVI

Post by Cece »

That does clarify the Medicare/Medicaid situation. How unpleasant....
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