So the other day my child brought home a paper from school about health exams. Apparently they have some agency that comes to the school and does a checkup, and they bill it directly to your insurance provider.
This seems weird and scam-ish to me. When I was a kid, they would do routine audiology screenings but that was provided by the state. It didn’t get charged to your insurance. And it left me wondering what comes next. Am I going to be on their permanent junk mail list? Are they going to ask me for a follow-up appointment and try to weasel their way into being my new primary pediatrician? I strongly suspect the goal was to put it in with the other 900 pieces of school registration paperwork parents have to fill out, and then bill their insurance, so that it is invisible to the parent but the agency still gets their $$$ for a service the kid probably doesn’t even need.
And here’s another thought: How many people do you have to kill before your medical practice consists of going to different schools trying to peddle this program to them? That seems like the bottom rung of the medical world, possibly just a step above the crazy German guy who works at the Army recruitment center. (If you went through the Sioux Falls MEPS, you know exactly who I’m talking about)
I have no take on whether it’s a scam or not, but this part
makes me wonder if this basically “go to a school, ‘examine’ 300 kids in a day, then bill insurance $200/kid, make $60,000 in one day, repeat at five school, and then have a $300k income for one week of work a year”.
Most schools require a physical at certain years, typically as each new school is entered or about 3 years apart. Is this an attempt (good or bad) to relieve parents of the hassle of getting in for routine school exams? Or is it in addition to having to have outside exams?
We had one when I was in middle school, to check for scoliosis. That’s why it didn’t immediately trip my scam-o-meter. The weird part is billing insurance. In my case it was paid for by the school board.
You’d barely be able to verify that 300 kids were alive in a day, and $200 is a bit steep. Plus, unless it was compulsory, you’d only get kids without pediatricians. So I don’t think the idea is quite as rewarding as you say.
I can see it for schools with lots of kids with poor parents (money, not parenting quality) who don’t have personal pediatricians and whose parents might not be able to afford time off from work to take them. So I can see the idea being a real benefit in some cases.
Our school contracts this out for teachers who want a quick checkup. The companies I’m familiar with send the results to your doctor and have no desire to have an ongoing relationship with you.
This may be a way that some kids get their school physicals. People with established doctors, like you, will probably ignore it. The kid whose parent can’t seem to get him in for a school physical may jump on it.
I think you missed the scare quotes. I’m not meaning this as a legit service, but more as a “yea, he’s breathing, now bill insurance, NEXT!”, then parents never hear of the results, insurance gets an inflated bill, and Dr. No-Morals laughs all the way to the bank.
It may well be a legit service to do actual checkups, in which case there is not going to be any higher payout than a normal practice. I dunno either way.
So does PA. In my district they free if you went with the group physicals arranged by the school, or parents could have it done at their own expense by the family doctor. The annual ports physicals had to be done through the school.
We got a scoliosis check in my school, but I would never have called it a physical. You’d go into a room with the nurse, raise your shirt, and the nurse would trace your spine down your back to see if it was straight. That’s how it was described, anyway, IIRC she looked at my back and said “you can go” without touching me (I was skinnier then).
me too!
when I was a kid, we had vision tests, scoliosis checks, hearing checks, and somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade periodic fluoride mouth rinses.
Last year, my son’s school wanted permission to conduct a full physical and dental exam. We had to laugh as we said no, because this is the same school that said his overseas travel immunizations were not acceptable because they didn’t follow the state mandated schedule for immunizations, in spite of the fact that his immunizations are up to date for basically until he’s ready for college (well ok high school)
When I was in school in New York in the 1970s and 80s, I had a couple of required but very cursory physicals from a well known local GP in the nurse’s office at school. I think they were in the 4th grade and 10th grade. He listened to my heart and lungs, took my blood pressure, and looked in my eyes and ears. Couldn’t have taken more than five minutes. We were required to have physicals either from our private physicians at their offices or from him at school. My parents opted not to take me to our regular GP, probably to save money. As far as I know, nobody’s insurance was billed for the physicals he did at school. His fee came from either the state or the school budget.
Scoliosis, hearing, visual acuity, and colorblindness tests were also done at different times. I think it was the school nurse who did those.