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I am having no luck getting TARS approved for my surgical patients.Does anyone have any suggestions which may help?One thought that came up was having an ortho pedist getting a TAR approved for a patient, then having the podiatrist do the surgery on the patient.Are there state requirements that say that is not allowed?(We don't care about the payment just that the surgery needs to be done and is best done by the podiatrist)Please,anyone with any ideas on getting the state to approve for podiatric surgeries would be appreciated! : Trapperanne

I quit seeing MediCal patients 17 years ago for the simple reason that not only are these patients likely to have a poor surgical result due to their noncompliance but they are more likely to blame you for their poor surgical result and then seek the help of a malpractice attorney for "your negligence". During my second year of practice I had a personal experience in this same situation. I took two weeks out of my practice to defend my actions in court plus spent countless hours away from my practice and family discussing my case with my attorney, preparing and taking depositions and losing sleep due to worry and stress. This experience luckily convinced me early on that life was just too short to do surgery on these patients.

By the way, I won the case and remarkably, the patient was able to go from "unable to walk for more than an hour" to working full time as a bartender soon after she lost the case. In addition, I never received my meager payment from MediCal until almost three years after the surgery was billed.

My advice would be instead of trying to "bend the rules" of the Medi-Cal system of California, you should put your long hours of podiatric medical and surgical education and training to better use by treating those patients that will not be so likely to blame you for their inadequacies and misfortunes in life. You will likely be much happier, have a much nicer practice with nicer patients, will sleep better and will be performing your surgeries on patients that truly appreciate your professional skills and talents.

This may not seem practical in your situation currently, but, I believe, you should talk to few other more podiatrists about their experiences with Medi-Cal patients before you try to manipulate the rules of Medi-Cal to do elective surgery on these patients.

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Sincerely,

Kevin

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Kevin A. Kirby, DPM
Adjunct Associate Professor
Department of Applied Biomechanics
California School of Podiatric Medicine at Samuel Merritt College

e-mail: kevinakirby@comcast.net

Private Practice:
107 Scripps Drive, Suite 200
Sacramento, CA 95825 USA
My location

Voice: (916) 925-8111 Fax: (916) 925-8136
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