Here are some additional
thoughts:
IDEAS for Finding a Physician: by Lucinda
Bateman, MD
1)
Call your health plan and insist they help you find a
physician who can provide good care for you, temporarily or
permanently. Put pressure on your health plan through the
patient advocate department to have trained providers on the
panel. If they don’t have qualified providers, put pressure
on the insurance plan to provide coverage out-of-plan for
qualified providers.
2)
Establish with a Primary Care Physician (PCP) who is
accessible, capable and compassionate. It doesn’t need to
be someone with expertise in CFS or FM. A good PCP can
assess symptoms, provide a diagnostic workup to exclude
other underlying conditions, and help with symptomatic
care. Let your PCP know there is good information about
CFS at the CDC website:
www.cdc.gov/cfs
3) You
can often get in sooner and tend to pay less when you see a
physician you have seen before, both generalists or
specialists. Physicians are more likely to gain
experience with CFS/FM when they get to know you over time,
rather than seeing you only once. Teach your doctors about
CFS/FM as you get to know them. Your providers don’t need
to be a specialist in CFS/FM to do a good assessment within
their area of expertise (i.e. cardiology, gastroenterology,
general surgery, etc).
4) When
you utilize an urgent care center (i.e. Instacare)
for emergency medical issues, be sure to focus on the new,
acute problem rather than your CFS/FM, which is a chronic
illness. Encourage the provider to focus on the urgent
problem in a standard way (ie abdominal pain, chest pain,
new infection, etc) and consider the CFS/FM only as a
secondary underlying issue. Be sure to provide good
medical information, including old medical records stating
your diagnoses, an accurate medication list, your bottles of
medications, the names and contact information of your
doctors, etc.
5)
Patients with significant pain issues might try to get in to
a Pain Clinic for help with opiate medications and
other pain interventions. There are several in town. Start
calling around, and ask them who else might be open. There
is a growing awareness of FM among all physicians, but
especially pain physicians.
6) The
most important thing to remember is that YOU should
take responsibility for your own health. Read and educate
yourself. Remind your physicians to keep your care up to
date! Know when you need lab tests (i.e. to monitor thyroid
levels, or screen for medication toxicities) and when you
should update your mammogram or PSA. Be the proactive one
to ensure it gets done.
CFIDS.org also has an excellent article on
this subject
