The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: BannedFromDU on September 19, 2013, 10:51:04 AM
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Star Member Aristus (30,876 posts)
A humble request from a primary care provider to potential patients:
When you make an appointment for a medical visit, please confine the chief complaint to one problem. Please don't bring a laundry list in with you. If you have something that needs to be evaluated, go get it evaluated; don't wait until you've got, like, five or six things you want your provider to look at. There just isn't time.
I know patients complain that we don't spend enough time with them during clinic visits.
I complain about that, too. I wish I had an hour or so to spend with each patient. But I don't.
And please prioritize, and make sure you have the most important issue listed on the schedule. If you have a sprained ankle, your little sniffle will have to wait.
And please, I beg you, when you're all fixed up, have your prescriptions in hand, and your lab test orders pending, and I've shaken your hand and bid you goodbye, don't hit me with: "Oh, one more thing, Doc!..."
For those without insurance, I understand your reluctance and trepidation to have to pay an up-front fee just to walk in the door, and that those fees can pile up unless you get all your problems dealt with in one marathon clinic visit. I hope the advent of state insurance exchanges in support of the Affordable Care Act will make things easier for you to make a clinic appointment when you need one.
And finally, we all know that there are apathetic, uncaring, burned-out providers out there. But most of us do care about our patients, want what's best for them, and want to do good medicine. It's sometimes hard to convey that impression when you're trying to fit 25 patient visits into a single day, and all of them have "just one more thing, Doc..."
I can't wait for the flood of stories on Oct 1...all those DUmmies streaming into the doctor's office, thinking they get free unlimited prescriptions for all the Oxy they can fit in their guts. It will be sweet. (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023695359#post9)
Makes sense, sort of: when you go to the doctor, have a point. An Agenda. Don't go in looking to have all your problems solved. Cue the self-righteous demanders of 100% free, 24/7 healthcare:
Star Member NYC_SKP (52,684 posts)
3. Maybe people don't want to have to pay a Copay for every complaint-- How about...
Having office staff check with people as they make appointments to see if there is more than one reason to see doctor.
I also suspect that the "just one more thing, Doc..." problem is limited to a chronic few and is just part of the territory for the profession.
My PCP always asks me if there's anything else and must just provide more time per patient.
If your problem isn't worth a measly copay, then STFU and grow a pair.
leftstreet (24,501 posts)
5. Sorry your valuable time isn't worth a 'little sniffle'
Did you really mean to sound so condescending?
People often have to miss work to see a healthcare professional
They often aren't paid
Anyone who charges for what you think should be freer than air is condescending, you waste of skin.
woo me with science (22,379 posts)
11. We go to the doctor when we can afford it.
I can't afford to pay for a different visit for each problem
Then you don't really have problems. I'm sure you have plenty of dough to give Skinner.
0bamacare is, in a few ways, going to be HILARIOUS.
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Get used to "clinics" DUmb****s.
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Actually, the aristocratic primitive is right, applicable currently, and after we get this "free medical care for all."
If possible, one should limit complaints to one per visit.
And a visit to a medical professional is not a leisurely social call; it's all business, and the sooner business is wrapped up, the better.
Now, I will admit there is a handy way around this "all business, only business" thing, but thus far I'm the only person who's ever seemed to use it.
I've always requested the last appointment of the day; say, 4:15 or 4:30 or something.
By that time, the physician is usually running far behind time, and one doesn't get into see him until, say, 5:00 or even 5:30. My business, because it's focused, is completed in short order, say five or ten minutes. I'm ready to go, the physician is tired, and so one supposes that's that. Time to say "thank you" and "good-bye."
That never happens, however. Since he's got no more patients to worry about, and since he's tired, the physician wants to talk. I'm ready to go any time he tells me to leave, but there's been only one instance the past twelve years that that's happened. All the other times, the business concluded, we chitchatted.
About just about anything.
I think the earliest I ever got out was 6:00; I know the latest was 8:15; in nearly all cases, since everyone else had left, the lights turned out, and the doors locked, the physician had to let me out.
It's when primitives want to do such things in the middle of the day, that it's a problem.
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Actually, the aristocratic primitive is right, applicable currently, and after we get this "free medical care for all."
If possible, one should limit complaints to one per visit.
And a visit to a medical professional is not a leisurely social call; it's all business, and the sooner business is wrapped up, the better.
Now, I will admit there is a handy way around this "all business, only business" thing, but thus far I'm the only person who's ever seemed to use it.
I've always requested the last appointment of the day; say, 4:15 or 4:30 or something.
By that time, the physician is usually running far behind time, and one doesn't get into see him until, say, 5:00 or even 5:30. My business, because it's focused, is completed in short order, say five or ten minutes. I'm ready to go, the physician is tired, and so one supposes that's that. Time to say "thank you" and "good-bye."
That never happens, however. Since he's got no more patients to worry about, and since he's tired, the physician wants to talk. I'm ready to go any time he tells me to leave, but there's been only one instance the past twelve years that that's happened. All the other times, the business concluded, we chitchatted.
About just about anything.
I think the earliest I ever got out was 6:00; I know the latest was 8:15; in nearly all cases, since everyone else had left, the lights turned out, and the doors locked, the physician had to let me out.
It's when primitives want to do such things in the middle of the day, that it's a problem.
Part of the problem is that DUmmies assume that doctors, because they have the audacity to earn more than minimum wage, are there to diagnose, treat, and HEAL all their ills. If a DUmmy has diabetes, it's a doctor's solemn duty to HEAL it, because DUmmies are forced by this cruel and evil world to overeat and lay around like slugs. Type II diabetes is a POLITICAL CONSEQUENCE, not a disease that requires 90% self-care. Likewise, rich doctors are expected to cure cancers caused by a lifetime of smoking, a habit pounded into DUmmies by pictures of Woody Guthrie. They HAVE to smoke...it's all they could do to handle the nerves that come from living in this horrible society. The least a doctor can do is HEAL them the ills caused not by sucking smoke from a burning weed into their lungs for 40 years, but caused instead by the required response to the horrors of Richard Nixon.
DUmmies feel entitled to lives of sloth, filled with rich food, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, and feel doubly entitled to have the effects of each driven from their bodies by these horrible people who extort money from them.
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They're primitives.
If the primitive had said "When you make an appointment for a medical visit, please tell me everything that's going on wrong instead of making 5 or 6 different appointments. That way, I can help more people" they'd complain about that, too.
They're liberals. Whining and complaining is just what they do.
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Too, there's that somebody else is usually footing the bill, both monetarily (the taxpayers) and in time (the medical professional), and so it's of no concern to the primitive that other people are waiting.
I've heard of people on medicaid who view doctor's visits as social diversion and entertainment; they're sitting around on their asses and got nothing else to do, so why not go and see the doctor?
In my defense, as to my comment above: please notice that I have no interest in wasting someone else's time; I leave when I'm told to leave. I'm never the cause for spending so much time; that I end up spending a lot of time is simply because it happens. I dunno why, but I seem to fascinate certain people, and they want to talk.
This is going to happen again today (Thursday), as my appointment, the last of his day, is at 4:15.
The last time, he kept me there until 6:30, even though the business had been concluded in five minutes, and I was ready to go. He was interested in why I consider speech defects worse than deafness, and so we talked about that, way into suppertime.
I let the other person call the shots; when he wants me to leave, I leave.
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President Reagan used to tell a joke about life in the USSR, it went something along these lines.
A man in the USSR goes into buy a washing machine and in the USSR you pay for the washing machine when you order it. The delivery date would be given to you after full payment. So the man asks the bureaucrat that was in charge of washing machine delivery times when he would get his machine. The bureaucrat tell him it will be 5 years from today. So the man asks if that will be in the morning or the afternoon? The bureaucrat laughs and then says that this is fiver years from now what difference would it make whether it is in the morning or the afternoon? The man replies that the plumber he just paid for will be coming in the morning.
This is going to be your health care with your local DMV government bureaucrat running it.
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Response to woo me with science (Reply #11)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 01:25 PM
OccupyManny (54 posts)
82. Money
You doctors make too much money as it is. Screw you.
What an asshole.
Response to Aristus (Original post)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 11:42 AM
Gidney N Cloyd (10,974 posts)
16. What a steaming load.
Aren't they the most charming people?
Response to Aristus (Original post)
Thu Sep 19, 2013, 11:42 AM
snooper2 (18,090 posts)
18. What are you doing on DU, there is a patient in the lobby right now!
LOL
Actually, I was thinking the same thing.
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By the time Obamacare is fully implemented and if you are lucky enough to live long enough for your name to come to the top of the waiting list, a year or two, you could write a book on your accumulated medical problems.