We wanted to thank WHT for their community service article and provide some additional information in regards to the “About Town” feature, dated Feb. 28 regarding HMSA finally allowing their members to post reviews of doctors on their website.
We provided WHT with three years of our time pursuing HMSA on our own, to finally allow Akamai Advantage members (Medicare) to post reviews of doctors they have seen, just like commercial HMSA members have done, forever.
An important fact that was not mentioned, is that HMSA will only allow a member to go back three years to post a review. Why three years? So we couldn’t post a review about a doctor that, in 2012, billed HMSA for a surgery he never performed, for tests that were not medically necessary, like harmful X-rays, all in an attempt to “pad the pockets” of HMSA providers.
When we discovered it on our RTM, and reported it, both HMSA and the authorities, allowed the doctor to just pay all the money back and walk away, with no accountability. It is the reason Medicare is struggling to provide quality health care to its Medicare, and Medicare Advantage, beneficiaries and $2 billion in Medicare fraud.
And why did it take HMSA three years to “fix” their website? They claimed they didn’t have the technical expertise to work out the bugs.
In reality, what HMSA couldn’t easily fix, is what their providers have done to us and how to keep reviews about it, from their other members. There is a serious, retaliatory story behind this issue and our membership with HMSA. Whether or not any news organization will have the guts to report it, only our persistence, and time, will tell.
“Doesn’t go down easy, does he.” Feb. 10, 2015, for Ann Duarte, CMS/SFO from Cate Korztzeborn, DRA, CMS/SFRO.
Christine and Tom Russi are residents of Kailua-Kona.