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
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