Well,
establishing care in New York hasn’t been as easy as I’d hoped, but the care
that I have received so far, other than at the student health center, has been
pretty good.
I have
student health insurance, so I have to get referrals from the student health
center. I went there, and was honestly
less than impressed, but have basically set up a relationship so there is
someone I can e-mail there when I need a
referral. This means I do not need to
make the trip to the student health center every time I need a referral, and I
think this relationship works well for all parties involved. I don’t think they really want to deal with
my complicated situation, and I’m not sure I really have a lot of faith in
trusting them to deal with my complications.
(And I don’t think this is necessarily unique to this one student health
center, certainly my prior experience suggests otherwise) So now that, that’s out there…
I got a
recommendation for a primary care doctor, but when I tried to get an
appointment with her, I was told she was no longer accepting new patients. Strike one.
When I called to get an appointment with the rheumatologist I wanted, I
wasn’t able to get an appointment until the beginning of December. Strike two.
But that
was a function of me not having my new insurance information until the
beginning of September – and the student health center being unwillingly to
help me set up care over the summer – because I think I’d be crazy if I tried
to suggest that there is a shortage of doctors in New York City.
Anyway, I
was able to pick a different primary care doctor, who I was able to see a few
weeks ago, and she gave me a recommendation for another rheumatologist, who I
will be seeing at the beginning of November.
So far, I’ve
noticed some major differences from the care that I had previously that I am
pretty impressed with:
They
actually – both doctors and support staff – know how to use their electronic
medical records (EMR) system. My
previous care team, a year into using the system, still had no clue what they
were doing, and this caused a lot of extra work for me. But my new care, not only do they push the
system on patients, but they actually utilize it, and do it well! And it’s funny because they actually use the
same system that my previous doctors use.
In New
York, while I was able to transfer my prescriptions, I was told that they only
allow one refill with the transfer, so I would need to get new
prescriptions. My doctor submitted all
of them directly to my new pharmacy so they will be there when I need
refills.
Another
major difference was that my blood was drawn in the exam room, rather than
being sent to a lab somewhere else, either onsite or offsite. That’s a nice change!
I also didn’t
feel like a sick person. Maybe that’s a
weird thing to say, but I didn’t. Maybe
part of it was the fact that I didn’t have to go sit in the waiting room of a
lab where I was the youngest person, and everyone looked at me with pity.
Every time
I call to get an appointment, as soon as I give them my information, they say How can we help you today, Miss Rott? I don’t feel like I ever got that kind of
respect from my previous medical care team.
In fact, the support staff were usually pretty disrespectful, if not
downright mean.
And so I
have to wonder, what’s the difference?
As my
boyfriend pointed out to me, there are several major hospitals in the area, and
because they are competing for patients, the quality of care and treatment that
patients receive is better than it might be elsewhere. For example, where we lived previously, there
was really only one game in town as far as a major teaching hospital was
concerned, and so, knowing this, I think they skimped a bit sometimes. Or maybe they just didn’t care because they
knew they were the only game in town.
It’s not
necessarily that I didn’t receive good care, but the extra touches weren’t
there. And I guess I didn’t really know
they weren’t there until I now have care where they actually exist.
Sometimes
change is a good thing! And sometimes a
little competition is healthy!