Dr. Harris M. Nagler, CEO
Executive Administrative Office
Beth Israel Medical Center
First Avenue and 16th Street
New York, NY 10003

As a 67-year-old Beth Israel patient, I like to see your institution take more seriously the risks of treating the elderly.

On March 26, I visited your Radiology Lab for a virtual colonography. I gave Dr. Elina Zaretsky my 6-page detailed medical profile to make sure she understood all the problems I was facing. After she started the procedure, she reported that she couldn't read the initial cat scan clearly enough and asked me to go home and spend another day doing the Lo-So Bowel Cleansing System and Tagitol preparations all over again. When I asked her if this surprising failure could be related to my diabetes she said, "Yes, of course, diabetics always need more preparation than normal people." I have no way to explain why she neither knew I was diabetic nor had given me adequate prep instructions since she had gotten clear instructions from my gastroenterologist, Dr. Bednarek, about this.

I went through a second day of fasting and diarrhea and came back to the radiology lab the next day. Since I was no longer sure that she had read my medical profile adequately, I asked her if being on a high dose of warfarin would increase the likeliness of rectal bleeding. When I reminded her that I was taking 20MG a day she seemed shocked and said she would need to take today's PT/INR reading. After waiting for 4 hours, Dr. Zaretsky came back from lunch and said that my PT/INR level prevented me from being a candidate for virtual colonography. When I asked her why she apparently hadn't read the 6-page medical profile I had printed out for her, she smiled and said, "Oh, this is a very simple procedure. We usually don't worry about complications."

I wasn't going to make a "big deal" out of this incident until today when I received in the mail a letter from United Healthcare informing me that "SLR DIAGNOSTIC RAD, BETH ISRAE*, PO BOX 10269, UNIONDALE, NY 11555-0269" has charged Medicare $250 for performing this test. So now a simple question of medical malpractice has apparently escalated to insurance fraud.