Department of Health and Human Services Drops Plans to Secretly Shop for Doctors

A few days ago the news was leaked that the Government was intending to secretly make appointments to see doctors. It was a secret shopper style program where doctors offices across nine different states would be called by a survey group from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. The goal of the proposed plan was to determine if there was any form of bias in doctor's offices that were accepting new patients based on what kind of health care coverage the prospective patient claimed to have.

On Tuesday, following an outcry from politicians and doctors, a spokesman for Health and Human Services stated, “After reviewing feedback received during the public comment period, we have determined that now is not the time to move forward with this research project. Instead, we will pursue other initiatives that build on our efforts to increase access to health care providers nationwide.”