stepford
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
One of those joys of ER with which most of us are unfortunately familiar is that as early retirement gets less early more and more of our body parts start to break down - and we need to find the right specialist to deal with it.
When I was with an HMO I didn't really need to think about this. I was just directed to a specialist of their choosing and that was that. I prefer the flexibility of my current PPO that gives me the ability to choose almost anyone (at least in the rather broad PPO network), but puts the onus of choice on me.
When I was working I would generally ask both my primary physician and some work colleagues for recommendations, cross-check with reviews from places like healthgrades and yelp and go from there. I always ended up with a good doctor and effective treatment eventually but sometimes had to try 2-3 before finding right one.
I could still do something like that, but wonder if there's a better approach to home in on the most effective person without the time and money loss of my previous hit and miss approach.
I know that in most cases lots of different doctors would be good enough, but I've had a couple of situations over the years with misdiagnoses and incorrect treatments and really want to avoid that in the future. I'm (perhaps naively) hopeful that finding the best doctor right off the bat will prevent that.
So how do you, the esteemed ER.org brain trust, choose your specialists?
When I was with an HMO I didn't really need to think about this. I was just directed to a specialist of their choosing and that was that. I prefer the flexibility of my current PPO that gives me the ability to choose almost anyone (at least in the rather broad PPO network), but puts the onus of choice on me.
When I was working I would generally ask both my primary physician and some work colleagues for recommendations, cross-check with reviews from places like healthgrades and yelp and go from there. I always ended up with a good doctor and effective treatment eventually but sometimes had to try 2-3 before finding right one.
I could still do something like that, but wonder if there's a better approach to home in on the most effective person without the time and money loss of my previous hit and miss approach.
I know that in most cases lots of different doctors would be good enough, but I've had a couple of situations over the years with misdiagnoses and incorrect treatments and really want to avoid that in the future. I'm (perhaps naively) hopeful that finding the best doctor right off the bat will prevent that.
So how do you, the esteemed ER.org brain trust, choose your specialists?
