An endocrinologist is a doctor specializing in hormone-related diseases, such as, in my case, diabetes. When first diagnosed in late September 2024, I got a crash course in the huge demand for that profession's services. The first endocrinologist I approached wouldn't see me for a year. The second wouldn't see me at all; he was refusing all new patients.
Figuring I would have to engage another gear if I didn't want to sit around, doing nothing, waiting to go blind, I grabbed my notebook and decided, if I couldn't meet with an endocrinologist as a patient, I'd find out what I needed to know by writing a column. Diabetes affects 40 million Americans; it isn't as if it's a personal affliction.
That third endocrinologist not only spoke with me immediately — barred doors fly open for publicity — but put me in touch with a colleague who, either through a sea change in my luck or, I suspect, some kind of secret doctor-to-doctor dog whistle, took me under her wing as a patient.
If this strikes you as morally squishy — the journalist pushing to the head of the line — I worried about that, too. But I didn't misrepresent anything; the column ran in the paper.
Besides, with health care, you have to be a strong advocate for yourself. Faced with the prospect of letting my condition go unchecked while I hunted with increasingly numb fingers for an endocrinologist with an open slot, I did what I could. At that point, if meeting Morgan Finley in a Cicero motel room and handing over an envelope of cash would have gotten me an appointment, well, I certainly would have considered it.
I thickly assumed this was a problem inherent to endocrinology. Getting diabetes is easy — I just woke up one morning with Type 1. Medical school is hard. Of course, there's a shortage. Now it turns out I was encountering, not a diabetes-specific bottleneck, but a generalized, widespread condition.
This week, The Economist published a story with the musical title, "Hospitals are stuck in a deadly doom loop." Turns out the 2020 COVID crisis not only killed millions worldwide and shut down society, but it also "did lasting damage to health-care systems."
Where? Everywhere, all over the world. What's been damaged? In a nutshell, everything.
"From admission to discharge, hospital care is now harder to access, takes longer and is of worse quality," the magazine reports. "The resulting toll includes avoidable deaths. Almost everyone is affected: across 18 rich democracies, satisfaction with health-care quality fell sharply after the pandemic and remains well below the pre-pandemic norm."
Getting an appointment takes forever. As does getting admitted after showing up in the emergency room. Last year, one in 10 patients visiting an emergency room in England had to wait 12 hours or longer before being shown a room.
And in Chicago, an NBC News Channel 5 report found that Chicago has longer wait times to see a doctor than most American cities — a month to see a primary care doctor. For specialty care, like neurologists, up to five months.
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And yet the healthcare corporations and their top brass rake in millions in profits while cutting staffing and patient care to 3rd world dystopian levels. Doctors owning their own pactices is now an anomoly. Almost everything and everyone is a pared down, rent-a-"insert job or service here". Every person is monetized, assigned a product value to be disposed of when not serving the profit margin. Like devalued migrant workers left dying in the fields. Yet the profiteers continue to use the lie that America is a Christian nation. Our continued history proves otherwise.
ReplyDeleteAmen!
DeleteArticle after article, press release and communication keeps telling me, all of us, that we individuals are responsible for our medical care. Bullshit. Like an abused spouse who realizing they cannot change the abuser, I call out Bullshit. I cannot make any doctor or hospital or insurance do anything they do not want to do no matter the seriousness of the situation. The powers that be can blame it and their mouthpieces can blame it on Covid, but this has been true for decades for the commoner. It's just caught up with the middle and upper-middle classes.
ReplyDeleteI remember conferences in the 1960s and 70s that sounded the warning bell, rang the alarms louder in subsequent decades, but the boardroom masters always wins. $$$ daddy needs another yacht, mansion, concubines...
Don't take it out on me. I'm just the messenger. Believe me, I wish we lived in a world where you'd sneeze and the Walgreens van would roll up with Kleenex. We alas — spoiler alert — do not live in that world. And I didn't write that individuals are responsible for their medical care, I wrote that, in the world we find ourselves in, you need to be a strong advocate for yourself. It helps to be firm but polite when doing so — if you've had a notable lack of success navigating your own health care, perhaps the way you go about it might be a factor. Because your comment ... well, there's a tone.
DeleteJust wait until the AI overlords start using a bot to determine if you are care-worthy ( that might already be in play) You are likely not to receive care if you cost the system more than a tiny amount. Frankly, I think the AI moguls would prefer to live on an unpopulated planet. That might be how they plan to fix the climate and not run out of resources.
ReplyDeleteI live in a small community near Tucson. When I moved here in 2021, my new cardiologist - who worked out of a major hospital system in the "big city" - would show up at the local clinic once a week. Then it changed to once a month. Then it changed to never, so I reluctantly switched to a new doctor. Then she left to take a new position elsewhere. Today I have my first appointment back with the original doctor, which now requires a 40 mile drive. I never leave a doctor's office without making the next appointment.
ReplyDeleteWe need to know more about the corporate culture that controls so much of our health care. i'd love to know about the salaries of the CEO's and about the amount of money that's spent on commercials for television -- commercials that keep telling us how important we patients are.
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