Editorial: Spotlight on alleged sham

Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007 | 7:36 a.m.

Many low-income people eligible for medical care under a federal program are underserved because doctors are being diverted from neighborhood clinics to hospitals, where their time generates more income for their employers.

Las Vegas Sun reporter Marshall Allen has disclosed the misuse of this program in articles over the past few weeks.

In response, the Nevada Health Division announced it would investigate the program, which enables foreign doctors who served their medical residencies in the United States to apply to remain here - if they agree to work at least three years in a medically needy area.

Two Health Division officials got the investigation off to an inauspicious start last week while visiting clinics in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas.

Some of the doctors who had complained to Allen about how their time was being abused by their employer were interviewed by the two officials - in the presence of their employer.

A Health Division official, however, told Allen that the visits were just preliminary and that a thorough investigation is planned. Nevertheless, the doctors told Allen that being interviewed in the presence of their employer chilled honest discussion.

A majority of the foreign doctors chosen for the program become employees of long-established, practicing doctors who also become their sponsors. It is here the program often goes off track.

Allen documented complaints from many of the foreign doctors that their employers force them to primarily see regular patients in hospitals. Because their employers are also their sponsors (without sponsors they must return home), the foreign doctors feel intimidated.

In treating hospital patients, the foreign doctors generate more income for their employers/sponsors than if they were seeing patients in the clinics in underserved areas, where the y must treat everyone, regardless of ability to pay.

Allen's stories have also generated interest from the Legislative Committee on Health Care, which is scheduled to hear testimony today about the program from the Health Division administrator and from officials of the nonprofit Nevada Health Centers Inc., which operates federally funded clinics throughout Nevada.

Nevada's main role in the program is to provide oversight to ensure that state and federal rules are followed. But state regulators have failed in that responsibility. We hope state lawmakers make it clear to them that such laxity is inexcusable.