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The Farmville Herald And Farmer Leader
Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia
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Dr. Arch J. Beatty accuses doctors of engaging in fee-splitting and ghost surgery rackets in New York, where surgeons pay referring physicians for patients and perform secret operations, leading to unnecessary procedures and inflated costs without patient knowledge.
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NEW YORK - Fee-splitting among doctors "is a sinister and spreading medical racket that is a menace to our health," charges Dr. Arch J. Beatty, writing in Coronet Magazine.
"Many people today," Dr. Beatty claims, "are made poor by unnecessarily exorbitant surgical charges and even by unnecessary surgical operations through the dangerous practice of fee-splitting." This racket "is an under-the-counter deal in which the surgeon buys his patients in order to perform surgery upon them, and in which fees from these operations are split between the surgeon and the referring physician without the patient's knowledge."
"Ghost surgery" is another form of this "evil racket" that is a menace to our health, claims Dr. Beatty. "Here, the patient is told by a general practitioner that an operation is necessary and is led to believe that the practitioner will perform it. Instead, without the patient's knowledge, a surgeon is hired to step in after the anesthesia is administered, perform the operation, then step out again."
"Today," continues Dr. Beatty, "surgery is a skill that goes beyond the use of a scalpel . . . But the ghost surgeon has nothing to do with any of this. The patient gets very little of what he is paying for. All too commonly, this means double the price for the patient."
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Dr. Arch J. Beatty charges that fee-splitting among doctors is a sinister medical racket where surgeons buy patients from referring physicians and split fees without patient knowledge, leading to unnecessary operations and high costs. He also describes 'ghost surgery,' where a general practitioner misleads the patient into believing they will perform the operation, but hires a surgeon to do it secretly, resulting in the patient paying double for inferior care.