"Doctors, Revolt!" ...I say yesssss!

[Mt_Rider]

My lovely rural clinic has evolved.....or rather "devolved" thru the past couple decades.  It now hires "traveling doctors" for about 6 months.  Then they move away and you start all over again with someone else. 

 

My childhood friend who became an RN and then the education director for a major hospital asked plainly:  How can they ensure continuity of care?  ......follow they money.  It's a business, not "care".  It's about avoiding lawsuits, not care.  THAT'S why they wake you up in the night ....avoid lawsuits! 

 

[...AVOID LAWSUITS....that's also why school buses don't have seatbelts.  Avoid lawsuit when bratty Johnny will not keep his seatbelt on and gets hurt in a sudden stop.  No matter that 49 other kids were not hurt because they DID keep theirs on.  We have to make choices on lowest common denominator..... ahem, but that's a different topic.]   

 

With the recent and ongoing medical difficulties with my dad  [thanking God daily/hourly that he did NOT go into rehab...tho he's being a real pill.... ]  this article seems to be very relevant to me. 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/opinion/sunday/doctors-revolt-bernard-lown.html

 

 

MtRider  ....pray for our family regarding how we respond to this current medical issue.  PS:  My DH is a saint! 

Edited February 28, 2018 by Mt_Rider

[Jeepers]

I'll read the article when I have more time but in the meantime, regarding the revolving doctors...that is the way it was/is in the military. When I was pregnant I NEVER saw the same doctor twice and I had never met the doctor who delivered my son. It's the government way don't ya know. 

[snapshotmiki]

Taking DH to the VA clinic, we rarely see the same nurseprac twice.  I am and will continue to try very hard not to become a part of this system any more than necessary! 

[Annarchy]

Yup... sounds right on the mark.

 

MIL had to go to the urgent care clinic for her ‘crud’. They gave her a prescription for antibiotics and told her not to take them unless she got worse. Of course she did get worse, (and now has relapsed), because her doctor is on vacation, out of the country. 

 

Would her doc have given her a different prescription, something that might have cleared it up?  IDK.

 

My doctor contracted with a ‘corporation’, that has built clinics in each town and fills them with nurse practitioners. I have not seen my doctor around. The staff regularly bills incorrectly.  The last time, they billed an insurance company we haven’t had in 3 years!  

 

My neighbor used to tell me how bad it was, when he’d take his 97 year old mom in for her hemoglobin treatments.  Regularly scheduled treatments, but for the last few years, the hospital couldn’t find the orders/patient records. He started bringing both with him to make sure they got it right. One time, they kept her overnight, didn’t feed her - she was insulin dependent and needed to eat. When my neighbor got to the hospital, first thing in the morning, his mom was almost comatose and the staff was running around in circles trying to figure out why. My neighbor told me he took one look at her, and told them why. He brought her back home that very day, refusing to let her stay ‘a couple more days to make sure she was ok’. 

 

I think those bad experiences caused him to refuse to go to the doctor/hospital when he first broke his hip. He gimped around his yard for almost a year before he fell one too many times. 

 

I haven’t had personal care in years. I’ve watched my doc change to the assembly line mentality.  I miss the doc that delivered me, he was the best.  Gruff old man, but he CARED about all his patients. Getting an appointment was a challenge because everyone wanted him as their doctor. But if you had an urgent need, they always managed to slip you in to see him.

[Mt_Rider]

5 hours ago, Annarchy said:

I haven’t had personal care in years. I’ve watched my doc change to the assembly line mentality.  I miss the doc that delivered me, he was the best.  Gruff old man, but he CARED about all his patients. Getting an appointment was a challenge because everyone wanted him as their doctor. But if you had an urgent need, they always managed to slip you in to see him.

 

 

Yep, Dr Art delivered me and was my doc until I moved to MN for college.  He was an Osteopath too, which made my transition to the MD Allopathic mindset EXTREMELY DIFFICULT.  Worse, the college MD actually WAS A QUACK!  Ohhhhh, he was bad.  Many of us had to get our care outside of the college because he was incompetent....along with being in the Allopathic mindset which I would use only as last resort. 

 

MtRider  ....pray for us dealing with my dad and his medical stuff right now   

[Jeepers]

Assembly line is exactly what it is. I remember when using military doctors for my prenatal visits, we all sat in a line and we moved down one chair as the person next to us was getting something done. Temperature...check. Move down a chair. Blood pressure...check. Move down a chair. And so on until it was our turn to go into the examining room. It's a good thing I was so young and dumb back then and didn't know any other way.

 

I got a strange bill for my supplemental health care. First of all they don't send a bill. I have a pre-printed voucher package with envelopes that they sent me. I've been using them for a year now. And the bill they sent me is long like a business size but the envelope they sent with it is a short one. The amount is $10.00 less though and it isn't due until May 1st. I'll call next week to see what's up. I've had nothing but billing issues since I went on Medicare.

 

Prayers sent up for your dear dad and you mother too.

[Ambergris]

I was delivered and got my childhood health care from a doctor who accepted a rural Mississippi posting so he could live and practice in the US.  We were not individuals.  We were processed by the batch, with an antibiotic shot to keep us well at the end of every well-kid checkup.  My tonsils and those of my cousins all went bad simultaneously, for example, and then our doctor got a new car.  Last I heard of him was when he went to the high school with a shotgun looking for his soon to be ex- wife.

[Mt_Rider]

That's AWFUL, Ambergris.  Guess we can find great and awful in every turn of the time wheel.

 

MtRider 

[Ambergris]

Yep.  

 

I keep hearing how awful the socialized medicine is in Canada, where they wait three to six months for durable medical equipment.  So I was told in September that I clearly, definitely needed an APAP or CPAP machine.  After jumping through all the hoops required by insurance, I got one several days ago.  After almost exactly six months.  And that's with truly platinum insurance.  I don't see the great superiority of our system.

[TheCG]

My mother's paying out the wazoo for both of us to go see a functional medicine doctor next month. Regular doctors can't figure out what's going on with her, and she's worried about me 'cause my health is worse than hers was when she was my age.