WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Dec. 23 (UPI) -- A North Carolina researcher says patients' bills of rights laws are not legal veils for healthcare providers as some critics charge.
Mark Hall of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, in a study summarized in the latest edition of the American Journal of Medicine, reviewed managed care patient protection laws in the 48 states that have enacted them and also surveyed state regulators about law content.
These laws seek to restrain perceived excesses of managed care, including "gate-keeping," or denying insurance payment for medically necessary treatment and restricting patients' choice of physicians.
Critics of the laws, however, say they actually provide protection to providers. Hall's research was designed to assess such criticisms.
After completing a review of state laws, Hall conducted in-depth case studies of six states, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia. He found that most of the patient protection laws are dominated by provisions directed primarily at patients' rights. Laws that are directed primarily to providers' interests are less frequent and not very strong.
