My medical group has been letting me down lately. I had established a comfortable relationship with my primary care physician, and my understanding of how things work with my HMO was good and workable. She laughed at my jokes, she kept an eye on my general health, all that. If I needed something, I knew how to get through to her assistant in her office, I got my prescriptions renewed when I needed them.
Then a couple of things happened . She became semi retired, whatever that means in the medical world, a couple of years ago. She only came in two days a week, and appointments were weeks if not months out. I saw her PA, a lovely young lady named Jennifer . I could get in when I needed to, things got done. Another change is that you could no longer get through directly to an office. You had to go through a call center , leave a message , maybe hear back. Most of my prescriptions were written by my primary care doc. Renewals meant having to time the request to land on her desk during the two days she was in, or wait a week. Too many miscommunications with my pharmacy. I scheduled my annual physical with her PA Jennifer. Had it, got my orders for a mammogram and for blood tests and all that, some of the refills I needed, with instructions to have any called to her. Great, right?
Then, when I went to renew one that I had no more refills on , and the pharmacy called me to say that they had been informed that my PA was no longer with the group, and no doctor there would do any renewals unless they had seen me. Mind you, this is after going to this group for decades. So, I made an appt., which they called and changed because the Dr I was scheduled to see decided to go to a conference the week I was scheduled. They kindly squeezed me in at the end of a day. The day I was supposed to go they called to see if I wanted to come in early. Unfortunately I work for a living. When I got there, the assistant asked me about all my prescriptions, and history and all. Then the Dr came in and asked me all the same...after asking me why I was there. The real answer was , “ because you made me”. In any case, she reviewed my prescriptions, asked who and why they were prescribed, had to ask me if I had been seen recently and if I got all my blood work done, and how it turned out. Not encouraging. She explained that she tried to review some stuff before she saw me, but that she had four new patients today....in the end, pretty much got the renewals with refills I needed., though the ones that they did electronically, they sent to the wrong pharmacy, which threw the Dr for a loop as she had a meeting to get to , and I was her last appt. I got written ones for two, and the others will be righted tomorrow. I called the wrong pharmacy, myself and cancelled, which they appreciated. She wouldn’t refill one because she doesn’t trust compounding pharmacies, so we will try her substitute and see how it goes. She really thinks I should drop hormones and get on with my aging
So mission mostly accomplished, but I am not feeling like I found a home, so to speak. I will likely look around to see if I can find a new medical group. One of the things that also changed was my medical coverage is now PPO, vs HMO. That gives me more latitude on how to proceed.
We shall see. It would be nice to feel you can rely on your doctor to know you and work with you. Darn that Jennifer the friendly PA, who moved to SF.
