Do Physicians Care About Their Patients?

The field of medicine has changed radically. Physicians have become more like businessmen getting patients in and out as quickly as possible. It’s all about numbers.

I’m sure you’ve experienced waiting in the waiting room for more than an hour to see your doctor and when you are finally called in, you’re there for two minutes?

It becomes very frustrating to a patient because our time is not valued.

Sometime after I had a skiing accident in February where I hurt my knee, I started to feel numbness in my hands, feet and face. I made an appointment with Dr. George Lowey in Long Beach. Dr. Lowey is one of those “old fashioned” doctors who really seem to care. He immediately sent me for tests to find out if it were diabetes or a vitamin deficiency. When the tests came back normal, he sent me to a neurologist.

I called his referral and made an appointment. I had to wait a month to see this guy. In the meantime, I spoke with Dr. Brian Cooperman of Northern Obstetrics.

“You have to see Dr. Haimovic,” he said, “he’s the best.”

So I canceled my appointment with the other neurologist and made an appointment with Dr. Haimovic in Great Neck.

After waiting nearly an hour in his north shore office, I met with Dr. Hamolvic. He spent literally two minutes talking with me and then gave me a series of tests. He suggested I go for further testing, which I did. Again, the tests were negative.

I called his office at least 10 times to get an answer on the results and no one called me back. He just told me to come back in three months.

Why three months?

I called him again, this time very persistent. “I need to talk with the doctor and need to talk with him now,” I said.

“What is wrong with me? I don’t understand why I feel this way and it’s not going away. Can you explain it?” I asked.

“No, I have no idea what is wrong. I know what it is not but I have no clue. Maybe you should get a second opinion,” he said. “I’ll send you over your chart and you can go wherever you want.”

He’s the best? Was Dr. Cooperman kidding me???

The next day, I get a call from his office. “Where should we fax the chart? What’s Dr. Lowey’s fax number?”

“I thought you were sending direct to me?” I said. Now, I’m starting to feel like Elaine in the Seinfeld episode, “The Package,” where she looks at the chart and sees that the doctor calls her a difficult patient because she didn’t want to wear a paper gown.

“It’s .75 cents a page,” he told me. “If I sent to your primary, it’s free.”

Oye! Send to my primary…. I just can’t believe that this guy is the best when he only looks at the surface and doesn’t go beyond that!

It seems to me that if it’s not a clear diagnosis, the physicians don’t want to go above and beyond to find out what’s really wrong.

The more people I talk with about this the more I’m finding that it’s the norm and to me this is very disturbing that you need to take your health into your own hands to determine your own destiny!