Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Wow! What a great policy!

I noticed this authorization in a patient's chart yesterday. Isn't it awesome?

The patient is only 44, and yet his insurance has been covering him for over 110 years, just waiting for his visit with me earlier this year.


(click to enlarge)


11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe they are trying to stay out of the crosshairs of the health care reform people.

Angela said...

Wow! think of how cheap the preiemums must be... $5 a year for coverage..

Silliyak said...

Must be close to the lifetime limit.

Moose said...

Sorry, Doc, but people in the computer field see this *all* the time. Things are always programmed stupidly so that the default "can't find a date, let's fake it" date is either 1900 or 1970.

stewbert said...

our speech platform has been having problems since 2010 started -- everything is coming up as 1910. Lame.

The Redheaded Pharmacist said...

I had a prior authorization go through the other day for a patient for his Crestor medication. The authorization will be good until Dec. 31st, 2099. Nice of them to ok it for that long huh? But I did warn the patient that in 90 years he will be SOL and will have to get it authorized again! He was ok with that!

Dajalu said...

I've had the same experiences as the Redheaded Pharmacist, meds ok'd til 2099. I didn't think my 84 year old patient would have to worry about it though.

donna said...

Can we say not ready for the
year 2000? I was in the computer
field, and this problem should have
been fixed in the year 1999! I guess
they dropped the ball. hehehe

Don said...

No doubt Donna,

I was working in IT for a bank in 1998-1999.

We had a ton of work going on. All to often programmers took the shortcut of changing the year window instead of expanding it to 4 digits. Was never clear on why this was a "shortcut"

Dr. Phil said...

I remember those days in the early 1900s. My office staff had to spend hours fighting with the insurance companies
for prior auths on leeches. Said the patient had to try and fail a poultice first....Rediculous!!!!

Lipstick said...

@Moose...I did not know that one of the default dates was 1970. I always thought that 1-1-1950 was one of those default DOBs... Interesting.
You know, I think there are a lot of us Grumpy-ites who wish you had a blog. :)

 
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