I was recently unpleasantly surprised when my Doctor's office told me that I would be required to have at least one appointment every three months, rain or shine. If I didn't fulfill that quota I could be dropped as a patient.

I was also surprised at the number of comments I received on a posting about this which appeared to approve of this practice. Only a small number were shocked, as I had been. So this poll:

Do you agree that your Doctor can require you to a minimum number of office visits per year? (If you don't comply you will be dropped as his/her patient)

We've used a sole Practitioner as our Primary Care Physician for some years now. He eventually retired and a younger doc took his place. Nothing much seemed to change, that is until I received a call from one of the office nurses reminding us that we hadn't been in in several months. I (naively, as it turns out) replied that, since my wife and I hadn't been sick we hadn't seen the need to see the doctor. That's when we were informed that a new company (part of the Humana group) had taken over the doctor's practice and that they had very specific rules for all patients. Chief among these is a requirement that every patient must be seen every three months, rain or shine! The nurses and office personnel are ordered to keep strict records and carry out reporting to the company on this. If you don't comply with this, the office will refuse to authorize refills on your prescriptions. Continue missing or rescheduling your 'mandatory' three month visit and the practice can drop you as a patient. When I grumbled something about 'maybe leaving', the answer was very clear: "For every one that drops out, we get four wanting to be seen".

Medicine in the new millennium - just keeps getting better and better.