Fraud and abuse of government medical benefit programs by psychiatrists.

Government rosters of physicians suspended from the Medicare and Medicaid programs because of fraud and abuse indicate that psychiatrists form a disproportionately large segment of the total. Of the factors contributing to this situation, the most notable is that because psychiatrists charge for time rather than for services, they are more readily apprehended if they violate the rules. The authors speculate on whether in fact psychiatrists break the law more than physicians in other-specialties or whether the statistics are purely artifactual.

The Amelia Stern syndrome: a diagnosis of a condition among female physicians?

Numerous studies have provided numerical portraits of some of the difficulties of women physicians at work in a field that traditionally has been the preserve of men. These studies, like much of recent feminist literature, often focus on the tension between maintaining a career and being a wife and mother. They usually provide aggregate data but fail to convey compellingly the nuances and emotions involved in the issues they address. Perri Klass's recent novel, Other Women's Children, the center point of this article, provides a case study of the thoughts and feelings attached to the issues addressed by the scientific inquiries. The book deals with the experiences of a woman pediatrician in a Boston hospital, a woman who uncertainly juggles her career and family responsibilities.

Fraud by physicians against Medicaid.

The inauguration of the Medicaid program in the mid 1960s ultimately led to the appearance of a wide range of new forms of illegal behavior by physicians. The fact that government authorities, instead of individual patients, were responsible for payments undoubtedly encouraged the large number of violations. A review of the background of sanctioned physicians shows an overrepresentation of psychiatrists and foreign medical graduates as well as minority-group physicians. Interviews with physicians sanctioned for Medicaid fraud and abuse indicated that they routinely placed the blame for their violations on the program, their employees, patients, or others. In particular, they find program guidelines confusing and irrational and insist that they intrude on what ought to be independent medical judgments. The enforcers, for their part, maintain that the convicted physicians are merely rationalizing self-serving and greedy behavior.

Conveying a sense of community along Bolsa Avenue: Little Saigon as a model of ethnic commercial belts.

PIP: "In the past, ethnic enclaves have functioned as homogeneous residential areas providing support and comfort to newly arrived immigrants. A new form of urban village is increasingly serving commuting immigrants who live in integrated residential neighbourhoods. Little Saigon, a Vietnamese commercial belt in Southern California, serves as a model of this emerging form. Participant observation and interviews with users of Little Saigon and other ethnic commercial belts in Southern California reveal that these areas provide users with places where they can experience the sense of community previously provided by ethnic ghettos." (EXCERPT)^ieng