10 Tips that can help you at the doctors office

10 Tips that can help you at the doctors office

Health care is out of hand without a doubt but there are several ways you, as a patient - can improve the quality and efficiency of your care. Even if you are happy with the care you receive these tips can increase the efficiency of your doctors visit and even decrease the time you spend waiting around.

1. Communicate clearly - There are few things more challenging for medical office staff than patients who do not communicate what it is that they need. The reason you are in the office or calling on the telephone should be stated in as simple a manner as possible. Keep in mind that not all problems are simple and not every situation is the same and most of us do understand that - just be as clear and concise as you can. (ie. "hello my name is ________ I am calling for an appointment to be evaluated for _______ with Doctor _______")


2. Be aware of what you are there for - It is quite a burden to decipher your medical issues for you, especially if you are a new patient. Physicians' offices around the country waste enormous amounts of their time trying to track down information about patients that they really should have already known. If you are referred to a physician by your regular doctor do not call for an appointment if you do not understand why you are being referred there. This will smooth the appointment making process and help to avoid mistakes like being referred to the wrong doctor.

3. Be polite - Whether you are calling for the first time or calling for the 3rd time in a day you can almost certainly guarantee a better outcome by simply not being rude. You are seeking medical care so it is completely without doubt that at the very best you are not feeling well - that doesn't mean you need to treat the staff like idiots before they even attempt to help you. You don't need to act like their best friends at all, you don't need to suck up to them; in fact I would personally say you don't need to be much more than a civil human being and speak calmly to really help me solve your problems or answer your questions. It is not bias so much as it is simply easier to help someone who is not treating you in a rude or disrespectful manner. The office is getting calls from extremely hostile and rude individuals all day long - if you are the one who was easy to deal with or even a pleasant person to talk to, you have a good chance of smoothing your entire care process as people are more likely to go out of there way to just to talk to someone who is a decent person. .


4. Have your questions written down before your visit - Take a few minutes; whether it be a day or two before your appointment or in the waiting for before your appointment, and write down what specifically you want to discuss with the doctor. If you leave your appointment with the doctor and think of more questions it is usually going to be a hassle for both yourself as well as the doctors staff and the doctor as he/she has certainly moved on to the next patient. This is not to say it is frowned upon, it is perfectly acceptable if you remember a question the next day or something of the sort, and the doctor may be very easily reached depending on your scenario and how busy the doctor is. However if you just walked out of the room, got the front desk and saying 'oh wait i forgot...' you are not going to help the doctor patient relationship because you are interrupting the flow of the office for something you very well should have asked moments before when you were face to face with the doctor.
NOTE: Try not to go overboard with it as I have personally witnessed a doctor walk into - and then immediately out of a room because the patient had a 6 page list of questions to ask before he even walked in, the doctor spent another 30 minutes printing out every piece of material on the patients diagnosis he could find to hand to them personally.

5. Know your facts - It should go without saying that it is your responsibility alone to know the facts about yourself, such as - what kind of insurance you carry, what tests you have had done, your prior medical history, and your allergies. Whether you think so or not - no one besides yourself is responsible for keeping track of the simple information. If you do not give the staff the correct insurance information or you change your insurance without informing them - you can absolutely be held responsible for 100% of your bill, read the contract you signed at the front desk; in my office it is in bold! If you don't mention a previous treatment, surgery or sever allergic reaction; you could suffer extreme complications or even die to not fault but your own. It's simple: you are the only one who is responsible for knowing the simple facts about yourself and omitting them is not hurting anyone but you.


6. Remember the doctor-patient relationship -This is an idea that has been mentioned less and less over the years however the fact is that the doctor-patient relationship will always be just that - a relationship. You have a role to play in the relationship as does the doctor. As with any other relationship, treating the other party poorly or communicating poorly is only harming the relationship: and since you (the patient) are the one who needs the help of the doctor, you are not helping yourself any by harming that relationship. Again as with the staff - you do not need to kiss up to the doctor. Rather you need to treat them as intelligent, decent people as most of them are when dealing with patients. The exception here is if the doctor is treating you poorly or not being respectful and polite to you - even then I would suggest you refrain from reciprocating the poor behavior and find a different doctor.
 

7. Follow directions -  It's quite sad that this is a tip but the fact is that the vast majority of the delays in patient care we deal with most frequently are caused by the patients themselves. Almost without exception anytime a patient is scheduled for any type of test or procedure, they are given both verbal instructions and written instructions. You need to understand them completely and follow them for your test or procedure to be preformed in any type of timely fashion. If you didn't do what you were instructed to how can you expect that your test or procedure will still be done? My office in particular mails them certified to every patient we schedule and yet 90% do not follow them. If you are one of the few patients who follows directions - you are a shoe in for fit-in appointments - this makes you and your care easier to deal with.

8. ASAP does not mean at your earliest convenience - Without exception, every patient believes that their treatment should be scheduled as soon as possible (ASAP)! Hearing this a few hundred times a day takes a toll on medical staff because it frankly gets old, as most patients do not understand that ASAP means next available and that's not always convenient for them. If you are telling the office to do something ASAP and they get you the next available appointment then you as a patient need to do what needs to be done to make that appointment work, ASAP DOES NOT mean that you get the next appointment that fits your schedule! If you request ASAP you are basically saying "I will do what needs to be done to get this done soon." Now if you just so happen to have something extremely important (ie. not- your family is in town, you are going to disneyland, or you have tickets to a show you want to see) and it truly takes precedence over your own health - you would be best advised to very sincerely apologize, explain yourself, and give the office the next time(s) that you are available and hope that they are able to match your schedule.

9. Anticipate delays - It sucks but all over the world doctors are outnumbered by a huge margin, this is what almost guarantees a wait at almost any doctors office. It is typical for a doctors schedule to be booked with two patients per every fifteen minutes, in my office it is actually scheduled four patients per every fifteen minutes for every clinic we have scheduled. Why? you ask - because for a doctor (the kind who treat patients, not work administrative jobs) to be successful he or she must make the best use of nearly every minute of every day literally if they are waiting around for a patient because the last one did not show up - they are wasting their time and could be on their way to a hospital to save a life. Try to understand if they staff is telling you the doctor is delayed - if you were lying in a hospital bed in unbelievable pain, would you want them to up and leave because they had patients in their clinic?


10. Understand a doctors limits - Doctors who save lives posses a skill set that is in high demand and as such, medicine is all doctors really get to live - and that is ok because it helps them stay focused. Aside from diagnosing illness and treating their patients, doctors knowledge of things like insurance procedures and even their own schedule - is minimal at best. They are specifically taught not to worry about these things because they are nothing but clutter in the brilliant mind trying to save lives - that's why they hire staff to handle these things. However you will be reluctant to find a doctor who will admit when he does not know (for example) when his next appointment to have your surgery done is. They probably have no idea what your co-pay will be and so on. So do yourself a favor and be aware of what questions should really be directed at the staff. If you ask a doctor anything that is not directly linked to your diagnosis or treatment (ie. insurance procedures, scheduling, disability papers etc) they will more than likely give you an answer reluctantly off the top of their head, that is worth almost nothing. My doctor will tell patients he can fit in their surgery 'next week' when in fact he is double booked in the O.R. and the office for the next two weeks. Why? Because it is not his job to worry about his schedule that's why he pays a scheduler. If you ask him how to get insurance approval he will tell you he'll take care of everything. Why? Because he has no idea and he knows it will put your mind at ease and you will walk away feeling happy and informed. The fact is - medical questions go to doctors: anything else goes to the staff - if you want an accurate answer that is.


Conclusion  - If you read these and thought that it was all common sense, you are right. However there is not one patient my doctors have ever treated that was actually able to use said common sense behaviors - people tend to get very emotional and lose their sense of rationale when dealing with doctors because the doctor has hundreds of people to worry about but every single patient doesn't care about anyone but themselves. Keep these in mind and you will make a positive impact in your own life. If nothing else - you will find that medical staff will treat you like their best friends if you simply a pleasant person.