My recent head pressure issue has made me more aware of how a portion of our healthcare system works, how I work, and how out-of-sync we are. These synchronization issues may be common knowledge to you, but I’ve been relatively healthy my whole life. Half-decades would elapse without visiting a doctor’s office. This weird head problem has made me think a lot more about what I need from the system.
I want a primary care physician (PCP) who is the project manager. No single doctor can know everything about everything, so I understand the usefulness of specialists, but I still want someone learned in medicine who can boil concepts down for me and separate fact from, well, not fiction, but cases where my needs and a specialists needs are not completely, 100% aligned (aka profit motive). The process would be: I visit my PCP, he refers me to a ENT, the ENT renders an opinion to me and my PCP, and then I get in touch with my PCP to discuss. In that way, someone trained in medicine has a holistic view of my issue.
Communication-wise, I want to be able to call and speak with my PCP. Further, I’d like to be able to email them and receive a response within a working day or so. I don’t necessarily expect this to be free, though I don’t know if there are mechanisms in place to charge for this. It’s silly for me to take a few hours off of work to visit a doctor in person to tell them the allergy medication isn’t working and we need to move on to the next step. If we chat for a few minutes and it’s decided that it would be better if I came in so I can be examined and poked, fine, I’m ok with that.
My frustration comes from me having to be the executive-in-charge of getting my head pressure problem resolved. A medical person would be ideal. Instead I’m relying on the peanut gallery of Google searches, Facebook friends, family, etc. Someone besides me and my ENT should help decide whether trigger point treatment is the answer, considering the question of what’s wrong hasn’t been answered yet. I feel like the ENT will recommend ENT options, the dentist will recommend dental options, and the allergist will recommend allergy relief options.
I’m approaching seven weeks of living in hell. I’ll see a dentist on Monday for their opinion. If a dentist doesn’t know and an ENT doesn’t know, then what? MRI? DeWalt?
Originally published at bbhart.com on July 7, 2011.