keeping track of medical records

[Black]

lazydays wrote:
Maybe I am not wealthy enough to see the right kind of doctor!

Or born a century too early... at the current state of medicine, there are a lot of "problems" that you're better off learning to live with than submitting to currently available treatment options.

[lazydays]

I agree about the state of medicine. Many of the drugs the doctors have wanted me to try are not necessarily experimental but they do not know exactly how the drugs work or how they change the chemistry of the body. I excused myself from that idea. I don't like the drugs I take but at least they are known entities.

[mrlynn]

lazydays wrote:
Btw, during this process I started to notice certain trends. I saw what treatments I'm repeating over and over (and are apparently not working), I saw that my current problems started small years ago and grew over time as doctors ignored my complaints, and I saw my bloodwork results and noticed deterioration in certain areas over time. Many things that I think my doctor should have caught a long time ago but did not. I really wish there was a way to have a doctor go over my medical records in a comprehensive fashion, spending real time on it, and come up with a treatment plan. Instead I have four different doctors seeing me for 15 minutes at a time and trying to slap band aids on my symptoms instead of treating me for the underlying cause. Very frustrating. Maybe I am not wealthy enough to see the right kind of doctor!

I used to call this multiple-specialist approach to patient care 'basketball medicine', where you bounce around from one to another, and no one has the whole picture.

A good primary-care physician (PCP, internist or family medicine) can put the pieces together (to mix metaphors), help you see the whole picture, and work with your specialists to make sure they're all on the same page (sorry, another one); it's especially crucial if you've got diabetes, or other systemic ills, which require constant monitoring of test results and medications (and making sure the specialists aren't messing up the med regimen).

The emphasis is on 'good'. There are plenty of internists who are pressured (either from their groups or from themselves) to see large numbers of patients every day, and simply can't (or won't) take the time reviewing consults, making phone calls, and taking complete histories. My wife is one of the good ones, but she can't handle more than 10-15 patients a day, and still is burning out from overwork. Doctors like these are a vanishing breed.

The office manager in her group spoke highly of another doctor, who sees up to 30 patients a day: "He's really speedy." My wife said, "Speedy medicine is not good medicine."

See if you can find a good PCP who can work with you to get everything straightened out. It doesn't cost any more.

/Mr Lynn