Doctors often deride managed-care companies as meddling and stingy with medical care.
But maybe doctors need to be managed. A study by the nation's biggest managed-care company, United HealthCare Corp., is finding that many doctors who treat its patients don't follow standard guidelines for medical practice. It shows that these doctors routinely fail to prescribe essential drugs and diagnostic tests for conditions ranging from heart disease to diabetes. Without the test to monitor glucose, diabetic patients can go blind, suffer strokes or have heart attacks, require amputations or endure kidney failure requiring transplants or dialysis. All diabetics should get at least one such test every year, says Kenneth S. Polonsky, chief of endocrinology and a diabetes specialist at the University of Chicago Medical Center.