Dr. Blount has been my care provider for over 10 years. Though, he and his family are super people, he and his staff clearly make you feel they are processing cattle. They do not answer their phone EVER. You have to leave a message, unless you are calling to take care of a bill. It routinely takes 48hrs to receive a return phone call. His support staff makes you feel as if they are doing you a favor, when providing any type of service.
Either Dr. Blount has gotten into some legal trouble with prescriptions, or is so concerned about his bottom line that its irrelevant how it may affect his patients. Recently, in an effort to mitigate his liability expense, he has engaged a monitoring company to perform urinalysis on all patience on medication. It is completely understandable that a physician may want to do this, and I have no problem with my doctor having a complete picture of what's in my system. However, this should be an opt in, or out policy. Further, we trust a doctor to give us care, we expect them to trust us about our own bodies.
This is an overhead issue for a doctor. If they choose to investigate hundreds of their patients this way - it should be at the doctor's expense. This is a test that is NOT medically necessary, and one not many patients would request. After 10 years of treatment - and taking the exact same medications, at the precisely the same dosage, I was given a urinalysis, then months later, received a $500 bill in the mail.
Without my knowledge, and against my will, it was presented to my insurance company for payment. I don't know what a doctor requesting toxicology reports, on their patients, does to your Insurance premiums, but can't imagine it helps.
Further, the doctor/patient relationship is one of complete (and intimate trust.) Urinalysis by your doctor without consent, then allowing you to be charged you for it seems a little Orwellian to me.
Worse yet, after complaint about the issue, Calvin had his sales rep (for the toxicology company) contact me - to 'sell me' on the service. She was kind, bubbly, and professional... but a salesman. In the end, both she and Dr. Blount encouraged me to simply "not pay the bill, as her company has no collections policy." She acknowledged they were getting lots of push back from folks with Blue Cross, because they don't cover it. So... its OK to create unwarranted bills, as long as the insurance company pays for it... its this sort of mentality that is costing us all so much in insurance premiums. Odd that a doctor mitigates his liability through an unwarranted test, but makes me liable for a $500 bill, and then encourages me to just ignore the liability he's created for me because "it will just go away." Really? Is that what we in the professional world do to our clients? Set them up for a bill, leave them on the hook, and then say "don't pay it, they probably won't collect."
All of us, who are self employed, look for ways to limit our overhead, and cut costs. I respect that focus on business, and understand the current health care climate has made it hard on General Practitioners. Dr. Blount was given weeks and multiple opportunities to rethink this. This was simply the cap in a series of progressively worse service & substantial staff turnover over the last 2 years.
Dr. Bawa, Dr. McKee are fantastic choices if you live in South Walton. This a LONG review, but 10 years of service from him merits that I back up my poor scoring. Unless you want to go see him for his new skin care line (seemingly their real focus now) I would NOT choose Dr. Blount.
by Anonymous
xxx.xxx.3.183
May 31, 2013