Doctors have a fair bit of freedom in deciding whether to take on a new patient. But once they do, ethics and state licensing rules limit the circumstances when they can drop the patient from their practice, the WSJ’s Melinda Beck explains in her column today.
“You cannot abandon!” a former AMA official wrote to Beck, explaining that a doctor needs to give a patient a chance to find another doctor before discontinuing treatment.
In general, docs can fire patients who consistently miss appointments or refuse to pay their bills. Chronically abusing the doctor or disrupting the practice or seeking drugs for recreational use are also grounds for dismissal.
But this sort of thing can be messy and complex in real life. So we want to hear from our doctor readers.
Health Blog Question of the Day: When do you fire a patient? And how do you tell the patient that he’s no longer welcome at your practice?