Warning: the medical system may be hazardous to your health.
From what I see developing in health care, not only will it not get better, it will get worse.
You don’t want to enter the system without a competent patient advocate.
The system has been destructed to take decision-making out of the hands of doctors and nurses who have dedicated years of commitment and training to the vision of caring for others and into the hands of administrators, insurance plans and pharmaceutical companies.
Their goal is the provision of cost-effective medical care, and “a pill for each ill.”
Of course you can be your own advocate, but my recommendation is to find a physician whose goal is your best interest. For example, I don’t know a distributor from an alternator.
So I found a mechanic who I can trust.
In many of these systems, the doctors have been stripped of their ability to provide care that is in the best interest of you as a patient.
Doctors and nurses have been reduced to treating the chart, getting successfully through their shift, and avoiding criticism from supervisors bent on not spending money and loss mitigation, or performing unnecessary procedures when reimbursed.
These days there is no knowledge of — or relationship with — you, the patient.
Patient care is secondary, and continuity of care is lost.
This means that nobody really knows you, where you’ve been or where you’re going in your treatment.
To ensure you get the best care, I suggest you write — in large letters — the salient points of your past history, allergies, medications, procedures and labs with dates and results, and treatment goals.
Present this to each shift doctor or nurse involved in your care.
Providers are denied or delayed treatments in hopes of keeping more of the health care dollar for the controlling businessmen.
Unnecessary procedures that are to be reimbursed by payers are abused by greedy clinicians or institutions with a blank check for care paid for by a third party they are not accountable to.
Who suffers? You do!
Medical mistakes affect 12 million patients per year and are the third leading cause of death in the United States (USA Today 4/18/2014).
How else do you, the consumer, protect yourself? Find a doctor who cares about you and can guide you through your care.
In my practice, I frequently have to counsel patients to avoid unnecessary procedures, offer new technological advances not paid for by insurers, and provide direction to updated medical practices, nutritional and alternative evidence-based treatments.
We practice prevention, early detection and the best treatments that modern medicine and proven alternative therapies have to offer.
I am not the only one. There are incredible private physicians here in San Diego who haven’t had to abandon their patients to organized medicine, although it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid doing so.
I have physician colleagues from all specialties from all over the county who only want what’s best for you, the patient.
When I don’t know an answer, I direct the patient to one of them. I explain the case and still oversee that the patient gets to a healthy outcome.
That’s what a concierge doctor does — and more.
If you are a doctor like me, who I can add to my list of private physicians who care, or if you know of one, please send me the information to add to my list of trusted clinicians ([email protected]).
We have been practicing preventive medicine for more than 30 years, studying how to provide your body with the nutrients it requires for all its metabolic processes, helping the body avoid breakdown and aging and encouraging vitality and optimum health.
We also believe in early detection and treating disease before there are serious effects on your body.
We also educate our patients and direct them to health, vitality and longevity.
I have assembled a team of healthcare professionals to assist me.
We are known as Wellness Etcetera, with offices in Carlsbad and La Jolla.
For more information, visit WellnessEtc.com, HeadtoToeLaserCenter.com or call (760) 944-9200.
