Find out in advance if yours does. Our letter explains how important this is. If your state does not, please feel free to use our changes as a template to change the law in your state as well. Ask your elected state representative. If they do not know what it is, have them call me.
Continuity of care is a critical component of all health care.
Equally essential is access to the specialists and emergency care for which a patient has already contracted. Some attempt has been made in the current California Health and Safety code to provide this. I have attached a copy of the existing law for your convenience. Physicians and patients such as myself have noted that as more doctors leave managed care, more individual practice associations and medical groups either leave an area or become insolvent, the patient often becomes a victim not only of the financial difficulties inherent in managed care, but of a gaping loophole in California's law that allows patients to have a health care service plan with no primary care physician. It is this enormous loophole that we are attempting to close.