THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA: Panel questions Health Department’s deal with doctors
Mar 13, 2009
Florida’s Department of Health got the word on Thursday that Senate lawmakers in charge of the agency’s budget aren’t taking too kindly to stories that the agency is paying private physicians more than $400,000 a year to do work for the state.
Instead, the chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Appropriations Committee told deputy Health secretary and former lawmaker Kim Berfield to seriously consider tapping into the state’s teaching hospitals and universities to fill spots now held by private doctors who made between $221,000 and $477,000 last year.
As Berfield began justifying the costs for attracting obstetric physicians to take Medicaid patients, committee chairman Durell Peaden cut her off, asking instead how the state could get more bang for its bucks.
One way, he suggested, was coordinating OB-GYN services with medical school training, which would have the added benefit of keeping some aspiring physicians and nurses in the state.
“If we’re going to pay top dollar for taking care of those patients, maybe we can get some teaching benefits out of that, too.” said Peaden, a retired Crestview physician.
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