IHC request frustrates patients and doctors

When I took my daughters to get a flu shot recently, the room was packed with other parent-child teams hoping to avoid the seasonal illness.

The line at the reception desk was unusually long and slow-moving because each parent was being asked to sign mandatory arbitration agreements now being used by IHC physician group doctors. It says if you are unhappy with the care in some way, you agree to go to binding arbitration, rather than court.

Staffers were answering questions about arbitration and explaining that if someone decided not to sign, the patient would have to find another physician.

For most, the request came as no particular shock. Those who have an IHC physician group member as a doctor received a notice of the new requirement and a pamphlet explaining arbitration in the mail a couple of weeks ago.

Since those letters went out, debate has raged about arbitration, especially the mandatory aspect of the IHC physician group's new policy. It's widely seen as a trial balloon sent up by the state's largest health-care system to gauge reaction by implementing it first among the patients seen by the doctors in the physicians' group, before expanding it to cover the entire system. And the patients who see one of the already-participating physicians and sign the agreement are agreeing to arbitrate any dispute within the entire IHC health-care system, not just with that physician.

Some physicians not affiliated with IHC have their own mandatory arbitration policies. The Utah Medical Association, the state's association of hospitals and others support arbitration. Opponents include some trial attorneys, a citizens-group lobby, some labor unions and, judging by my mail, a lot of average Joes. But there's a lot of crossover. I've received correspondence from doctors who don't like arbitration and from lawyers who do. Patients are all over the board.

Among those in the middle of this battle is the reporter, charged with explaining what everyone says and hoping to provide some context, an assignment with a sense of unease because it's clear almost everyone with any expertise in the subject has an ax to grind — or at least that potential.

Here's a small sample from my mail:

There's the small-town family physician who laments "excessive malpractice premiums," but also that his premiums are 70 percent of those charged for OB/GYNs, though he delivers one-third as many babies, for much lower pay than a specialist receives. He has colleagues who may stop delivering babies because it "doesn't make economic sense."