Seeking a good Doctor, African American or some one who wont rob you

[TurcoLoco]

Originally Posted by Jane72

ten-dollar words.

Wth is a 'ten-dollar word'? I guess I've been too cheap to learn?
lol

[Jane72]

Originally Posted by TurcoLoco

Wth is a 'ten-dollar word'? I guess I've been too cheap to learn?
lol

You know. Like, big words.

[azriverfan.]

I would like to add that the Minute Clinics in CVS and the Urgent Care facilities are not that much cheaper. Most of these clinics charge $90 for a first time visit. I recommend them because they are convenient and I would rather you go there than the Emergency Room if it's a non-acute emergent visit. It will not only save you money but it will save you time as some of our ER's can have 15 hour waits on busy days.

The other thing is the Minute Clinics and Urgent Cares are staffed by Nurse Practioners and unsupervised Physician Assistants. This is a controversial topic so I will try to be as fair and balanced regarding seeking care from them. The difference between a physician and a NP and a PA is residency. PA school is 2 years and there is no residency involved. Some PA's elect to do a residency to become more competitive for certain sought after fields or because they felt their training was inadequate during school. Nurse Practioners are nurses with their bachelors degree who then attends school for 4 years but do not complete a residency. Physicians do 4 years of medical schooln after 4 years of college and then a minimum of 3 years of residency. PA's spend their first year doing basic sciences (book work) and a year of clinical rotations. Physicians and Nurse Practioners each spend 2 years of their training doing clinical rotations during their schooling period. To be fair, most Nurse Practioners were nurses first and spent years treating people in the hospital so their level of experience is much higher than than a person graduating from medical school. Nonetheless, the experience that physicians get during residency trumps any experience the Nurse Practioners and Physician Assistants receive during their core school training.

In short, you learn to become a doctor during residency when you work long hours (80 hours per week), see lots of patients and are presented with cases that are atypical. Residents train in teaching hospitals which are the hospitals that receive difficult cases that other hospitals couldn't deal with. The Residents' superiors are called Attendings and these are licensed physicians who choose to work in the teaching environment rather than private practice and are some of the most brilliant physicians you can see since they continue to work in an environment in which they are seeing the most challenging cases. In general, this training really enables a physician to see something beyond a typical presentation due to their experience treating something that presents with something that seems normal and then ends up being something much worse. Nurse Practioners and PA's usually train in private practice outpatient clinics with limited teaching hospital experience. If you have a choice and can see a physician, I would recommend doing so because they have the most experience. In addition, call various doctors' offices and explain you have no insurance and are paying cash, many offices charge reduced rates to accomodate people due to the soaring cost of health insurance. Often times, people just assume the doctor's offices are always more expensive and that's not always the case. For example, there are many PCP's who would charge a patient $90 if they had no insurance and needed to seen. You have to call around.

However, if its the weekend or evening and you know doctors offices are closed and you want to be seen immediately, go to the Urgent Care because those are sometimes staffed with physicians and nurse practioners. The Minute Clinics or clinics like them are often staffed with PA's that are "supervised" by physicians in the area who are not on-site but are "available" by phone.

[The_Cadillac_Lawyer]

I think you guys are missing the point. As I interpreted, it was not so much about the cost of the office visit as it was about the request to come back the next day and pay again. To me that is absolutely ridiculous!

......OT, but I had a dentist apt. for a deep cleaning that required an hour and half appointment. The dentist tech had to leave early to pick up her child and I had to be rescheduled to come back to finish what she couldn't do, and of course had to pay another $25 office visit. I was pretty frustrated, and brought this up, but it did no good. Doubt I'll return to that Dentist again. Why should I have to pay for someone else's appointment restrictions. They should have scheduled it accordingly.

[blisterpeanuts]

Originally Posted by trudawg

I think you guys are missing the point. As I interpreted, it was not so much about the cost of the office visit as it was about the request to come back the next day and pay again. To me that is absolutely ridiculous!

......OT, but I had a dentist apt. for a deep cleaning that required an hour and half appointment. The dentist tech had to leave early to pick up her child and I had to be rescheduled to come back to finish what she couldn't do, and of course had to pay another $25 office visit. I was pretty frustrated, and brought this up, but it did no good. Doubt I'll return to that Dentist again. Why should I have to pay for someone else's appointment restrictions. They should have scheduled it accordingly.

You've got to be kidding. They cut your treatment short, kicked you out and made you come back the next day, and then charged you extra? That's kind of unbelievable.

What I don't like is when they tell me I have a cavity. It messes up my whole day. No wonder dentists have low job satisfaction. They have to give their customers so much bad news.

I wish they would hurry up and invent tooth cloning, so that we can pretty much just replace'em when they wear out.

[azriverfan.]

Originally Posted by blisterpeanuts

You've got to be kidding. They cut your treatment short, kicked you out and made you come back the next day, and then charged you extra? That's kind of unbelievable.

What I don't like is when they tell me I have a cavity. It messes up my whole day. No wonder dentists have low job satisfaction. They have to give their customers so much bad news.

I wish they would hurry up and invent tooth cloning, so that we can pretty much just replace'em when they wear out.

What bothers me isn't finding out I have a cavity but it's going to another dentist and finding out I have no cavities or seeing another dentist and finding out I have 5 cavities. It's not standardized. You really have no idea who is telling the truth and which procedures are warranted which is why I did my own research and painstakingly looked things up because the dentists don't want you to know what the guidelines are. How is there such a discrepancy in diagnosis between different dentists. The same isn't found in medicine to the same degree. If you have an appendicitis, you have an appendicitis and it's going to be treated the same whether you go to one surgeon or another. I thought about this issue and I think there are explanations for this. In medicine, most of our diagnosis is confirmed through radiologists and pathologists who have no incentive to diagnose one way or the other. Dentists on the other hand make their own diagnosis and read their own films so they have incentive to read something a certain way. Second, there are ramifications to improperly diagnosing something in medicine because of health consequences so the goal is to make the most accurate diagnosis possible. There is a fear to misdiagnose someone due to potential lawsuits. There are risks to performing unwarranted surgery or putting someone on medication or chemotherapy they don't need. In dentistry, there is less risk with overdiagnosing. How much of a risk to your health is caused if they put in some extra fillings, pull a tooth, or do a deep cleaning?