M
anaging your relationships with doctors can be a challenge. Here are a few tips that might help.
It all begins with finding good doctors. In many parts of the country this can be hard. There may not be many choices. Start with a list of “candidates” –
For a primary care doctor – look under “internal medicine”, “family practice” or “gynecologist.” Those are the most common types of doctors who do primary care.
For medication management – look under “psychiatrist.”
For therapy we suggest starting with “psychologist” (although some psychiatrists do both).
OK, now that you have a list, how do you choose?
If you have a local magazine (usually named after the closest big city – for instance Los Angeles Magazine) it may publish a review of doctors. Those are of variable quality, but often have a bit more information than just looking through “Yelp” reviews. Also, check to see if the medical board for your state allows you to search online to make sure that the doctor you are thinking of going to doesn’t have any license problems and to make sure that your doctor is board certified (this isn’t necessary, but it does provide one way of making sure that your doctor knows his subject). Look to see if your doctor has a website. Go to it and get a feel for the practice. Look in one of the online doctor sites (vitals.com, healthgrades.com, etcetera), not so much for the reviews, of which there are usually too few to have much confidence in them, but to again be sure that your doctor went to a good school, actually graduated, etcetera. If you are lucky enough to be in an area where Consumer Checkbook rates doctors, definitely go to their website (it costs money but it is worth it – www.checkbook.org).
Now you are set for your interview of one or a couple of potential doctors. We suggest that you don’t tell your candidates that you are interviewing them… if only because you want to get a sense of their typical practice, not how they function when under a spotlight. But do have a short list of questions in mind. Are there any things about past experiences that are important (doctors who don’t return phone calls, doctors who don’t seem to care, etcetera)? Look for those warning signs, and ask your candidate how he or she prefers to handle phone calls. Ask them how they got interested in working with folks with moods… and then wonder how they manage to keep up with all the changes in their field…
At the end of the interview we suggest making a future appointment if you feel it was a good fit (check to see what their cancellation policy is). But if you feel it isn’t going to work out just say that you are looking for something a bit different.
Next time we will talk about how to manage your relationships with the doctors that you have found….