For many disabled patients, the doctor is often not in

https://undark.org/2022/11/07/for-many-disabled-patients-the-doctor-is-often-not-in/

by Brajeshwar • 4 years ago

25 17 4 years ago

techdmn• 4 years ago

In my area there has been a lot of consolidation in healthcare in the last decade or so, and care has gotten noticeably worse. My dad, living 200 miles away, has similar experience. He describes his provider as "Procedure oriented". If they can see you and quickly decide you need a procedure, they will do so, because they can bill for both. If anything is wrong with you that they don't immediately understand, or can't treat with a billable procedure, they don't have time for you. Profit driven health conglomerates are looking for efficiency. Inefficient patients are not profitable.

enragedcacti4• 4 years ago

I have an unfounded suspicion that that this phenomenon is driving part of the increase in anxiety diagnoses. Based on what I've seen in a couple of different chronic illness forums, lots of people have the impression that when doctors can't easily test for something then they often just drop it into the bucket of "anxiety", even when that experience of anxiety could be driven by physiological issues and not the other way around.

hotpotamus2• 4 years ago

Certainly possible, but the problem is that anxiety is extremely common and can have quite pronounced but generalized symptoms. The saying in medicine is "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras". Meaning that you should not jump to exotic diagnoses lightly.

sarchertech• 4 years ago

Yep that's what happens when the doctor no longer owns the practice. Most doctors I know got into medicine in some part to help people, but when a doctor owns the practice, there's an additional motive to consider the long term implications of every patient interaction.

When they are just an interchangeable employee, you're back to all the problems that come with motivating employees. The easy and most common solution is to tie pay to performance--where performance is measured in how much the employee brings in for the company.

This gets even worse when instead of the employer being a non profit healthcare organization, the employer is owned by a private equity firm.

VancouverMan• 4 years ago

There are worse situations.

Government-run, "socialized" health care (especially with unionized staff) is one example.

As a monopoly, government has no financial or other incentives to provide efficient and quality service. If more money is needed/wanted, it's simply taken from taxpayers.

Even worse, there are no real consequences or accountability for poor performance from any of the participants involved.

We end up with bloated health care organizations that deliver slow and ineffective treatment at a massive cost to society at large.

If the government-run health care system employees are unionized, it's even worse. The unions involved will effectively become political entities, doing everything in their power to block or impede any kind of meaningful reform or optimization of a broken (but beneficial to them) health care system.

It gets even worse when the government-run health care system, despite imposing a massive tax burden on taxpayers, doesn't even cover common procedures or treatments (dental, vision, prescriptions, and so on). So those already paying into this "socialized" system often end up needing some sort of costly private insurance, often offered through an employer, or they have to pay out-of-pocket.

What's described above is what we find with the various provincial government-run health care systems in Canada.

Canadian patients who can afford to do so will usually seek treatment at a private provider in the US or elsewhere. It may be expensive, but at least those patients tend to get effective treatment in a timely manner, which is something that's extremely rare with Canada's various "socialized" health care systems.

ianbutler• 4 years ago

I have a dear friend with some chronic illness bordering on disability and can confirm anecdotally what this article is saying. She’s consistently ignored or told what’s she’s feeling is irrelevant, but hey what does she know she’s just had the illness from birth and is highly educated enough to read journals and have a pretty informed opinion on her own care. She also has a terrible time getting seen by specialists.

It’s compounded because she’s a young woman and my god while it’s not discussed here doctors are horrible with treating women. Between friends and family I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t told me they’ve had problems getting their doctors to listen to them and this is the case even when the doctor is a women themselves. It’s just like the system is fundamentally unable to cope with women’s health as a patient.

enragedcacti4• 4 years ago

I've been reading a lot about POTS for which 90% of sufferers are women. The sheer volume of people venting about not getting adequate consideration or treatment is really sad. It got to the point where the community has listings of doctors that are confirmed to understand the condition and take it seriously which is ass backwards considering most people go to the doctor because they have no idea what's wrong with them!

Its sad to think that your friend is "lucky" relative to some to have developed the skills to interpret medical literature and advocate for herself. So many people, and women in particular, seem to get told they are faking it or that their symptoms are psychosomatic and they don't even have the tools, time, or money to advance their own treatment.

shmageggy• 4 years ago

A few years ago there was a billboard in my city opposing an assisted suicide/death with dignity bill. Turns out it was sponsored by a disability advocate group who claimed that doctors abuse these laws to kill disabled people. Pretty shocking if true.

drpyser22• 4 years ago

Lots of things are shocking if true. Without context this sounds like a nutty conspiracy theory painting doctors as a eugenist death cult.

exolymph• 4 years ago

Here's one example: https://www.australiancarealliance.org.au/canadian_quadriple...

digitalengineer• 4 years ago

This is terrible and heart breaking, really. To circle back to the speciality of people on this website: it’s the same for a lot (most?) of all websites. Having a disability usually means you can’t use the website properly. People like to complain about the EU and all of its rules, but I feel companies should be forced to have an accessible website and I’m glad the EU is forcing this. The rules are there, they are called WCAG. An accessible website benefits all users, not just the ones with a disability. Especially the digital experience is something we can fix. Source https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1202&intPageId=55...

a_shovel• 4 years ago

Eventually, the patient’s adult daughter told Lagu that she hadn’t been able to find a specialist who would see a patient in a wheelchair. Incredulous, Lagu started making calls. “I could not find that kind of doctor within 100 miles of her house who would see her unless she came in an ambulance and was transferred to an exam table by EMS,” she said, “which would have cost her family more than $1,000 out of pocket.”

This is shocking. I've accepted that there are a lot of crappy doctors, and it might take some effort to find one that's competent enought to help you. I hadn't considered that there might be no such doctor within a hundred-mile radius of you, even in a place like Illinois.

faeriechangling• 4 years ago

Lol I’ve straight up had professionals fire me as a patient because they didn’t feel qualified to treat me and didn’t know how to treat me.

For many disabled patients, the doctor is often not in

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