By Kelsey Givens

With just one week left for Medicare open enrollment, HealthCare Partners of Nevada hosted its final town hall meeting of the enrollment period Tuesday evening to answer any questions seniors might have about services in Pahrump.

Dr. Pejman Bady stood before a group of approximately 20 seniors at the Pahrump Nugget to share information on HealthCare Partners’ “total care” model and discuss the benefits of choosing a doctor working for the physician group.

Using a combination of personal experience and company philosophies, Bady connected with each person who asked a question, making sure to answer their query in a way that not only made sense to them, but everyone else in the room as well.

“We’re really focused on our total care model. We review all of our patients that we have and we address all of their issues and we really go out of our way. I meet with all of our doctors regularly, I go to the hospital, I think we have a fantastic overall care that we produce and I think that it’s good for our country, this is what our country needs, doctors to start talking to each other and put patients first. We at HealthCare Partners put patients first,” the HealthCare Partners doctor said in an interview prior to the start of the event. “The thing is we are very strong here, we have a lot of doctors, we have a lot of specialists and our total care model is already here in Pahrump. So really, it doesn’t matter how good of a doctor you are, if you don’t have access required to get from point A to point B you’re not going to get good healthcare. So I don’t think anybody out here is as up to par with quality of care we provide.”

The meeting started with a presentation outlining HealthCare Partners’ structure, mission and an introduction to their physicians here in Pahrump.

It wasn’t long into the first few slides of the program, however, that the first question was asked about how important communication between HealthCare Partners doctors and their patients truly is.

“In order to be able to heal, and I learned this from my dad, he always told me you need to sit down and look at your patient and ask them questions and let them talk. And if you let them talk enough they’ll give you all of the answers you need,” Bady began.

“I’ll demonstrate with a story of my own. I was engaged to a very beautiful girl from the South, a Southern girl, beautiful redhead. She had a doctorate in anesthesia, just perfect. We ended up not getting married, because what I think lacked in my relationship with her was communication. We couldn’t communicate. And once you don’t have that communication then everything stops working. And I believe that in everything, not only my personal life, but my work life. If we speak a different language we’re not going to get anywhere. I may have a little accent, but I still speak English. So I think to have excellence you need to be able to communicate, because communication is a common denominator in all of our lives,” he answered.

As the night continued, other major health topics of the day began to arise, including abuse of prescription medication and what it means to join a senior group like Humana or Senior Dimensions when it comes to choosing a healthcare provider.

“Here’s what happens, you have Medicare and when you turn 65 you get your Medicare cards. But Medicare only pays for 80 percent, it does not pay the other 20 percent. So for that 20 percent you can either have an additional insurance, or some of these senior managed care companies come and say, well listen, if you come join Humana or Senior Dimensions we will take your Medicare Benefits and you don’t have to pay that 20 percent and we will manage all of your care,” Bady explained about the senior care groups. “And I think the key is who manages that care better, who has the right people in the right places to manage those patients better is the better company.”

After a question about the physician group’s new electronic prescription program came up, Bady told those present looking at the bigger picture, the program was also another way for the doctors to help stop prescription medication abuse in the community.

“Pahrump has had its share of problems, and our company made a decision that we would have a zero tolerance for this problem because we were able to make a difference,” he said. “We looked at all of the prescriptions of the providers in our group, we put them all through training, we hired a pain management doctor to come out and then solely deal with our problem with narcotics abuse and train and work with our primary care doctors so when somebody comes in who is 20 years old and is taking 250 narcotic pills in a month or selling them, we’re no longer tolerating it. We dropped this narcotic problem by 60 percent; we still give them out, patients still use them, need them, but we give them out appropriately. And one of the undercover narc police officers came up to me and was like ‘you know what, it is almost impossible to buy any pills off the street in Pahrump.’ Which is my territory with my patients, and I’m really more interested in Pahrump so if they go get their stuff from Vegas and come back I can’t really control that. But we’ve done our share for our community and our country to do what’s best for our patients and just help them.”

Bady also went on to share with attendees some of HealthCare Partner future plans including their own personal customer satisfaction surveys and getting credentialed at Desert View Hospital to see and treat their patients there as well.

Medicare open enrollment ends Dec. 7. Bady said after that time only those with a special needs program will be able to enroll.

For more information on the benefits of HealthCare Partners or which plans they accept, those interested can visit <a href=keepmydoctornv.com.

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