Drowning in Paperwork

Yes, healthcare insurance coverage is becoming less-inclusive, more complicated, and more expensive as insurance companies and providers look for ways to keep costs down. Yes, this has led to medicine becoming more and more of a business in recent years and to fewer people utilizing preventative care or any medical care, for that matter, because they don't want to or can't afford to pay for it. I knew all of this before and yet still I want to go into medicine. I like to think that I will do my part to improve the broken system when I get there and also hope that a change in administration will occur and begin to address some of these problems before then.

In the meantime, as a patient, I can totally understand why no one wants to go to the doctor unless something is really wrong (and many of them resist even then!). I have just spent the majority of my day (which began at 8:30) thus far on the phone to various doctor's offices with little to show for myself. Yes, I have quite a few things to arrange, but why, oh why, do they have to make it so complicated?! I need to have my medical records, for example, transferred to my current doctor so that they can fill out the forms I need for Georgetown saying that my immunizations are all up to date. For one tetanus shot I had in the summer of 2006 at the University of Michigan, I was made to wait on hold for 15 minutes (while the pre-recorded messages informs me of all the awards the UofM system won last year for patient care, what a crock!), only to be transferred to the medical records department and told that I or my current doctor have to submit a written request to them AND that it will take five to ten business days to process! Not only that, but when I called my doctor's office to see if they could submit the request, I was told that I need to pick up a request form at their office. For one shot, people!

I need to go to a dermatologist to have them look at some moles on my back since I'm super fair-skinned and at high risk for skin cancer. My doctor "referred" me (0r so I thought) to one and gave me the number to call to make an appointment (remember when your primary doctor's office used to do that for you?). So, I called them up today and initially they said they couldn't see me until August 12th, until I mentioned that I will be moving and need to get in before August. Suddenly, an appointment on the 24th materialized from the ether. Now, I have to call my doctor's office (which will be my third call today) to have them make the referral so that I can actually be seen. Why am I even bothering?, I have asked myself countless times today. I am a young, healthy individual and I have plenty of other things going on in my life with the upcoming move without having to deal with this bureaucracy, "protocol," and paper-pushing! Grr...I think that's going to be one of the hardest things for me to adjust to as a doctor. Maybe this little misadventure today is one experience I must have to help prepare me for such a frustrating future.