What's your experience with Doctor hell?

Can you change your doctor? That runaround seems somehow unnecessary, if your doctor runs a reputable practice.

I agree w/ laureth. Also preauthorizations are a pain in the ass for all involved (pharmacy, you and, yes, the doctor).

While it sounds like this could have been handled w/ more efficiency, in the long run, direct some (if not alot) of you hostility at your insurance carrier.

Preauthorizations are just another hurdle that your insurance carrier puts in place to decrease the chances that they will have to cut into their profit margin and pay for something on your behalf.

You and the doctor would both be happier if the insurance company would get out of the middle.

I would definitely begin doctor shopping right away! That is just an awful lot of bullshit to put up with. I love my doc’s practice. They are great people, and very efficient. One of the first practices in our area to implement electronic records. You can even order refills online!

A patient was just yelling at me over the phone about something very similar to your case. You’re not in San Antonio are you?!
What we (the pharmacy) wound up doing is loan the patient 3 tablets to hold her over till Monday (since we do have a valid script for her) and hopefully the prior auth crap will go thru on next week (otherwise we won’t get paid for the loaners).
If your med isn’t too expensive, you can pay out of pocket for your RX now and get reimbursed once the claim goes through. Or, if your pharmacy is generous like us see if you can get some loaners or buy a few pills to hold you over ;)
I hate prior auths! I see this stuff every day!

@thetmle

Edit to my answer…

you, the doctor and the pharmacy would be happier….

For some reason psychiatrists seem to be particularly bad about this. Of all the doctors we see, only one type ever really gives us a problem about both appointments and meds, and that is always the psychiatrist.

The psychologist calls the day before to remind us of appointments, as does the internist, the cardiologist, the podiatrist, the opthamalogical surgeon, the pediatrician, the physical therapist, the allergist, all the various other specialists we have to see, and my family doctor. The nephrologist calls 2 weeks in advance, to make sure we get my husband’s tests run and then calls the day before the actual appointment. But the psychiatrist’s office never, ever calls to remind us and is offended to think that we might need such a thing. After all, our brains are all perfectly normal at our house, right?

In addition, the psychiatrist will reschedule our appointment randomly and will let us know by mailing a letter that often doesn’t arrive until the day of the appointment. And does it actually reschedule the appointment? No, it merely cancels it and tells us to call to make another. When we call the next available slot will be in several weeks to a month. In the meantime, we have run out of drugs for my bipolar son. Oh, and they only answer the phone between 9 and 11 am and 2 and 5 pm, except when they are in meetings, when they don’t answer it at all.

Then as far as meds go, all of the doctors, with the one exception, will write a script that same day that we can pick up at the office, or will respond the same day to a phone call from, or a fax sent by, the pharmacy, with one exception, and you probably have guessed it, the psychiatrist’s office.

So here we have the doctor that deals with the function of the brain that seems to think our brains should be working just fine, while doctors that deal with ills of the body worry that our brains might be overloaded so that we forget to come see them.

In the meantime, my son has run out of his anti-psychotic meds and is starting to talk to invisible people again. sigh

Our pharmacy does the best that it can and often gives us loaner pills when possible, but still you would think that a doctor dealing with folks who have mental problems would do a better job of making sure they remember to come to see him and to take their meds to begin with!

What is really sad is that this P. doc is the best one we’ve had so far. One even abandoned her practice and simply left a prescription pad with her very young and inexperienced receptionist. The rumor is that she assaulted her lover and is now in jail.

So do I think there is any truth in the theory that folks become psychiatrists because they need one themselves? You betcha!

Hang in there, daloon. Take a warm bath and try to relax. You are not alone.

It’s a very sad story. I had a doctor, and he was great. He’d been moved around from office to office, but he was still great. When he landed at this place, customer service went all to hell. They even did customer surveys, but it was bullshit, as far as I can tell.

But then a horrible thing happened. My doctor’s vision began to narrow. Eventually, he was categorized as legally blind, and he couldn’t see patients any more. So, they switched all his patients to a colleague of his. This guy is ok, but he hasn’t known me for 20 years. There are things that just don’t appear in the medical records.

Who knows? Maybe my original doctor would have seen how badly off I was, and told me that I had to see a psychiatrist right away, and I wouldn’t have gone through three or four more months of hell.

I told the new guy everything, and all he said was that I “might” want to see a shrink. Later I asked him about that, and he said that a lot of patients don’t respond well to being told to go to a shrink. If he had known me, I’ll bet he would have made the call a different way.

Anyway, it’s not so much the doctors there, as the bureacracy that is the problem. The appointment fiasco was a result of their supposedly “fasttrack” appointments. When my doctor first left, I thought I might have to find a new doctor. Now, I guess, even though I hate the hassle (they do have my records, and they are electronic, and there’s no certainty this will work with a new doctor), it is looking more and more like I have to change.