How to get more out of your health care

We all know that the health care industry in the U.S. is sick as a pup, but no one can agree on the reasons, and no one agrees on the cures. At the national level, it’s a complex crisis.

At the personal level, health care providers’ compassion is being eroded by time crunches, perverse incentives, and the pressure to tick certain boxes on the billing profile to shift their focus from people to profits. Despite the advances made by the wonderful mid-level providers (whom I include as “doctors” here), personnel shortages in key areas will continue to stress an already stressed system.

Patients are suffering as well. Even if we have access to health care, our visits to the doctor are often difficult, frustrating, or contentious. For people with chronic illness or disability, it is worse by orders of magnitude. While we wait for the miracle that health care reform would surely be, I believe we can at least improve our own and our families’ experiences and outcomes. To do that, I want to prescribe a few basic tactics and some attitude adjustment.

Here’s what usually happen when you get sick in America.

First, you live with the pain or the rash or the twitch for as long as you can, trying every remedy you can think of, including Dr. Google, who can see you 24/7 but is not a good listener.

Finally, you cry uncle and go to whatever real doctor is in your “plan.” (If you are lucky enough to have a “plan.” No plan? Keep living with the pain until it sends you to the Emergency Room.)

When you get to the doctor’s office, you try to communicate both your worries and your modest expectations. You hope the doc can confirm-or-rule-out whatever you think is wrong, and then give you a note that excuses you for missing work. And maybe a Z-pack.

And you say all this in a rush, because you know that a typical visit will barely last 12 minutes, and that the doctor will probably interrupt you an average of 17 seconds into the consultation.

What are the possible outcomes? Best case: the doc declares that it’s nothing…

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