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The input of someone who has been there and seen their disease progress farther is valuable.
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That’s a horrible thing to say.
If you go to urgent care, you most likely won't get a physician. 9/10 visits are urgent care you only see a PA or NP and they can't even really do much. Urgent care seems to also provide really poor results--every time I've gone it's a long wait, the workers seem over-stressed, you barely get any time with the doctor, and usually they just do a strep test or give you a Zithromax pack and hope you'll go away.
Because PA time is cheaper to the provider than MD time. Give it a few years and a trip to the doctor's office will mean using a touch screen a-la-mcdonalds to describe your symptoms and then the first-line medication pops out of a drawer. I'm pretty jaded with our (US) healthcare system. As long as you stay on the happy path it's fine, but if you stray from that, good luck. Over the last few years I was given antibi…
There's nothing actually stopping you from getting a fungal culture yourself. The turnaround time is over a month though. Unless you're at a huge hospital they just farm it out to Labcorp and the like and you can buy direct. Like it makes sense, if it's high-probability bacterial you might as well try the z pack first. It's faster to just treat it and see than to test if it's bacterial. Also for SSRIs there's nothing…
I get annoyed when I send a message to my doctor and it takes 3 back-and-forths to get a message from him, and not the nurse. The nurse's advice tends to be along the lines of what I would find with Google, some semi-relevant copy/pasted advice. I get the sense that they make the messaging system useless so that you have to sign up for appointments/video appointments. They know that for GP appointments, you only pay…
Not sure what line of work you are in, but are you willing to answer endless emails and or voice mails from customers, all for free? I know I am not - and while you personally may only ask one question a year, a typical MD may have a panel size of 1000 to 3000 patients (at least the ones I know); multiply one question per patient by 2000 patients, and all of a sudden you find out you worked for free for most of the year.
Maybe if insurance companies had a billing model that allowed the MDs for charge for this type of 'support', that made them some money it would be workable - but I can't blame them for not wanting to give out free care this way.
canadian anecdote: i havent seen my GP ever . He just oversees resident (student doctors). Ive had chronic health issues for 3 years now without much relief, despite having been to the doctors office 20+ in that time. Most of the time they deflect me from specialist care.
> Ive had chronic health issues for 3 years now without much relief, despite having been to the doctors office 20+ in that time. This is the problem with all of these systems that try to violate the laws of physics (aka: free market economics). They invariably results in substandard care, if you receive care at all. Keeping people alive isn't the same thing as actually solving problems with quality care. This is my b…
I would think at least before expenses it would be quite high as medical visits cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
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i already understand the economics, these types of systems exist everywhere, usually to the detriment of everyone. However, all they need to do is not deflect me from specialist care, so im not sure it applies 100% here. Check back in a month when i go to the office again and insist on seeing a specialist.
Mine was more of a general comment on these types of systems rather than an explanation for what you are going through. I have no clue why they are treating you in the way you describe. It might be interesting if you could ask them why they haven't referred you. Even more interesting if they gave you an honest answer. Good luck.
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This was my experience going through a half dozen doctors. I found a great one finally, but they didn't even bother taking insurance, and it was very expensive.
Excluding emergency situations, the biggest issue IMO is diagnosis. So many tests, scans, listening, observation, etc. is all about understanding what the problem actually is. Once you accurately identify the problem, treatment can be effectively given (if one exists) via the current system. For mysterious problems that elude a simple diagnosis you can really be stuck. Most doctors don’t have the time for complex cas…
This is something I have been a big advocate of. I would never claim to know more than a professional nor would I ever give medical advice to another individual.
However, it has helped me plenty of times. I feel like I have been able to ask more important and impactful questions to doctors, and I have been able to push back on some choices that doctors would have made that I think might have been incorrect.
For example, I was almost prescribed a medication. That particular medication might have treated its indicated condition well, but it is known to exacerbate my immune-mediated disease as a side-effect (to clarify, the medication was not for the immune-mediated disease).
When I mentioned it to the NP I was under the care of, she said, "I have never heard that side-effect." Well, she looked into it, and it turns out I was right. Had I not done my research prior to our visit, then I might have been subjugated to changes to a disease that could have been entirely been avoided.
I still think she is a wonderful NP, and no one can know everything.
I even have another account.
I asked an MD about a newer medication for my immune-mediated disease. He said, "I have never heard of that before." After discussing it with him, he did not seem to be interested in trying it. I swapped doctors, mentioned it to the new doctor, and she prescribed it. It's actually the single most effective treatment I have tried since I acquired the disease 7 years ago.
As Schoolhouse Rock once said, "It's great to learn 'cause knowledge is power!"