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At the Conference of neurologists this past week , I overheard some potential
concerns about the quality and availability of PD Medical care expressed as
follows.

Some of the neurologists were indicating that it takes substantially longer to
treat a PD patient in an office visit than it takes to treat other types of
neurological diseases.  The doctor must spend more time analyzing the nature
of the treatment since it has to be individualized or tailored to the patients
need.  A longer interview is required to get at the bases of  the needed
information to treat.  They estimated it took five times longer to treat a PD
patient and this fact was not being recognized by the Insurance Industry.
Thus in any effort to maintain profitability the elective choice was to treat
4 or 5 non PD cases to maintain profitability levels.

If such a trend is developing it will further reduce the availability of good
quality physicians entering or staying in the movement disability category.

Has anyone experienced this problem yet.  Maybe it is just the tip off the
iceberg for a developing problem.

Dale Severance
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