February
28, 2020 — Local Update to the MDVIP Issues Report:
On January 30th, 2020, 4 months after deciding to leave Dr. JB's practice, our sample
patient received a mysterious envelope, addressed by hand, delivered to her home, via USPS
Certified Mail, with a rubber stamped return address of Platinum Health &
Wellness. Thinking that perhaps Dr. JB had thought better of not keeping his part of
the bargain, she hoped that the envelope might contain his apology and the refund that she
had requested, in the form of a cashier's check. {She had previously asked the MDVIP
Franchise Headquarters as well as Dr. JB for her money to be refunded because he failed to
perform. MDVIP said, No, outright and Dr. JB had shaken his head and launched
into a rehearsed list of excuses. These extra MDVIP patient fees, totaling
approximately $5400 were paid by our sample patient, on-schedule, with the expectation
that Dr. JB would perform ALL of the list of MDVIP promised services. Dr. JB
got his extra money from her, on time, as promised; {According to the sample
patient... she kept her side of the deal, but Dr. JB did not.}
However, upon opening the envelope,
our patient found an intimidating demand letter signed only by Dr. JB, [with a copy
to an attorney]. The letter included State of AR civil and criminal legal
citations. It seems that our sample patient, who is a now a widow in her 80th year,
is being directly intimidated, coerced and threatened with legal action if this MDVIP
Report, [which was first researched and written in the Summer of 2019],
continues to stay on-line past February 28, 2020.
This frightening attempt to
blackmail an elder patient seems hard to believe. The letter signed by Dr. JB
claims that he never gave permission to record her office visits; the letter further
claims that he has sustained financial damages from the release of this report, and also
claims that the financial viability of his practice is being threatened. We would
ask...how can the loss of a future revenue stream from this one sample patient threaten
the financial viability of his practice?
So logically, we might assume that
there must be other patients who have decided to leave his practice for their own reasons.
Dr. JB now appears to be very unhappy about any loss of patients, and is trying to cover
his future revenue stream, by demanding that this report be removed from internet free
access to other potential MDVIP patients, who may be researching the pros and cons of
being an MDVIP member. His letter also demands that all copies. transcripts,
summaries, or other records derived from the posted recording and all other recordings of
our conversations be destroyed by our sample patient! But hold on,
patients are not possessions to which any doctor is entitled. They are human beings,
free agents who are capable of deciding to move on. We suggest that Dr. JB is
trying to find someone else to blame for what he may have brought upon
himself.
As to Dr. JB's claim that he never
gave permission for the recording of office visits: Our sample patient with her
husband (a retired medical professional) recalled this discussion with Dr. JB when they
first interviewed him, as potential new patients on Sept. 25, 2007, about their ongoing
expectations, if they were to choose him as their Primary Care Provider. The
discussion went, as follows: Because older patients often do not
accurately remember what transpires in an office visit, the doctor's instructions are
forgotten, and important information is lost by the time they get home. If the
patient attempts to take accurate notes during the visit, it is stressful and distracting
to the patient, often lengthens the visit, annoys the doctor, and the take-home result is
no better. Therefore Dr JB was told that, as his patients, they (Dr.
& Mrs. sample patients) would be recording each and every visit, so that
they could take in as much as possible of the doctor's counsel in real time without
pressure, and then they would fill in the gaps of the details later, at home, as they
logged the recorded visit; they would verify with each other the summary before it was
committed to the file. At that time, Dr JB's response was very complimentary and
approving; something to the effect that he completely agreed, and thought it was such a
good idea to do that; he wished that more patients would do likewise; and he might
recommend it to others. The results for Dr. JB were two more patients to
generate revenue. They were his patients beginning in 2007.
At that time (2007),
Dr. JB and his current partner were providers employed by Washington Regional at Hidden
Springs in Rogers. Following that, in 2013, Dr. JB and his current partner both
became providers for Northwest Medical at Sugar Creek in Bella Vista. It was during
that period, in the fall of 2015, that our sample patient became a widow. She
continued seeing Dr.JB as he began telling patients that he was going out on his own
in 2016, into a concierge practice with a maximum of 600 patients. His patient
numbers were in the 4 figures at Northwest Medical, and he needed to recruit enough of
those patients to follow him to his new practice — patients with enough money to pay
him the concierge fees that he required.
The opening of their new franchised
MDVIP medical practice happened in 2016, and was named Platinum Health and Wellness which
is still operating in the HOG Cancer Center. Our sample patient believed Dr. JB's
promises and followed him into the MDVIP practice where she soon began to notice a lack of
performance as to her specific requests and needs. She stayed on until the Fall of 2019,
when her last quarterly payment expired with no resolution to her complaints and continued
admonitions of Dr. JB for not keeping his word to her. As mentioned earlier, she was
refused further service by Dr. JB, unless she kept making her MDVIP extra payments.
In response to the demand letter of
Dr. JB, the patient further advises that I will be keeping in a secured location, all
family medical records and logs concerning my deceased husband's and my time with Dr. JB,
since it has now been made clear that this report clearly shows examples of his lies. And,
as to the recording of his easily recognizable voice, which verifies the truth of
the material shared in this report, I will be keeping my copy as well. No
wonder Dr. JB wants all evidence destroyed! For a doctor to not give full disclosure
to his patients, and try to cover up the facts that might strongly impact their opinion of
his integrity, honesty, and motivation, is very interesting indeed.
But back to this update...Since the
initial release of this free-access on-line MDVIP Review and the accompanying research in
late summer of 2019, the electronic files have been kept on a remote server (nowadays
called a Cloud server). It is most likely that the information in this
report has been viewed, printed, bookmarked, and copied by any and all
viewers. Furthermore this information would typically have been crawled by
Internet Spiders, mirrored for various search engines and even archived in web indexes.
Therefore, Dr JB's demand for removal makes no sense, as it will not reverse
the effects that Dr. JB's own choices and his own actions have unleashed upon his own
concierge practice.
All patients have a right to tell
their story and have an equal right to their own opinions. Their medical records are
their own private property including the lab results, X-rays, reports of findings from
whatever is done to them, personal summaries that were kept of each doctor visit. What if
those records provide evidence of medical errors or fraud? We would ask...to whose
advantage would it be for those records to be destroyed? So what is Dr. JB's
true motivation for these demands?
Upon further research , there is one
last topic that we need to share for this update... that of Elder Abuse and
Neglect which is rampant in today's world; we all have heard the horror stories
and it is often about taking money from elders by deliberate, premeditated methods.
Here is more information that may be useful to elderly patients or their caregivers,
and we felt led to draw your attention to the following...
There is a category within the
subject of Elder Abuse entitled, Healthcare Fraud and Abuse,
which is — Carried out by unethical doctors, nurses, hospital personnel, and
other professional care providers,
that can include:
1] not providing healthcare, but charging for it;
2] overcharging or double billing for medical care or services;
3] getting kickbacks for prescribing certain drugs;
4] over medicating or under medicating;
5] recommending fraudulent remedies for illnesses or other medical conditions;
6] Medicare or Medicaid fraud.
Dear Patients, If you
recognize any of these abuses in your provider, it would be wise to detach yourself from
him/her and find another provider. Your life could depend upon it.
Why the Information is Here
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