How To Manage And Resolve Your Frustrations With The Health Care System Barriers


by Curtis Graham - Date: 2007-04-11 - Word Count: 606 Share This!

If you truly care about ways to find the absolute best medical treatment obtainable, without begging, then you have found the right place to start. It's your job as a patient to make it happen-not any other person or group will do it for you. Right this second you probably feel that I'm blowing smoke at you to sell you something. Not true!

It's more like a wake-up call. The best that this healthcare system can provide is mediocre medical care. You can do wonders to improve your own healthcare by simply knowing how to avoid the frustrations and pitfalls in the system, and by knowing how to manage your own healthcare problems---short of outright combat.

Some patients have inadvertently stumbled into the solutions that work. Some were just waiting for someone to write this article so they could feel justified in ripping into their doctor.

If you learn to handle the frustrations first, then your quiet gentle self (in full control of your emotions) will easily manage further outrages at how you are being treated. And all that opens up the doors to much better health care. You need to be on the offense-not defense.

Mandatory factors for successful management of healthcare issues:

You must be sincere and persistent. You must be confident you will find solutions. You must have a legitimate healthcare problem. You must find the decision maker. You must choose the right timing to go at it.Organize your rules of engagement by:

Understanding the problem issue in detail and what you want done about it. Determining what you believe is the cause(s) of the frustration---to point them out. Getting to the point of your frustration in your first sentence to the listener. Presenting honest facts and true examples of what is bugging you. Setting up the priorities of each issue you intend to describe. Consulting with other patients with the same frustrations to seek solutions. Writing down the primary contentions of each issue and have them with you. Learning how to keep your emotions out of it---or you lose! Offering the decision maker suggestions for solving each issue. Making sure you always reach a solution before walking away.This should be enough firewood to light up your mental stove for a lifetime!

Tips for successful confrontations:

Insure there are no distractions during the process. The decision maker often will select one of your suggestions as their solution. Getting emotional destroys your focus, and prevents solutions. You control the conversation as much as possible. Making your point immediately tells listener you value their time. Let your intuition tell you if the person is a "patient advocate." Confronting an "administrative advocate" means you have to start over. Choose early in the day before their stress becomes maximum. Try to manage each frustration and issue separately, at different times. Presenting several problems at one time confuses the listener. Blunt, direct to the point immediately eliminates the listener's on going train of thought (mind is somewhere else). Directness causes the listener's mind to focus on you alone. This is not a time for socializing and caressing egos. Remember-carry a big stick in case it goes sour. All of this is applicable to frustrations with your own doctor, or any doctor, as well as hospitals, medical organizations, HMOs, or paramedical personnel. The lesson here is to gain the confidence in yourself that you are capable of acting on them in an efficient manner. The step above "frustration" is anger. Therefore, the need to avoid the frustrations to begin with.

You will find much more detailed strategies of how to avoid the barriers to good health care in my series of articles on the topic on my website.


Related Tags: health care, doctor, medical treatment, medical care, patient advocate, healthcare problem

The author, Curt Graham, is a retired medical doctor who has written extensively on many topics over his 35 plus years in active medical practice as a specialist in OB-GYN. He has been published in MODERN PHYSICIAN, an elite publication for physician executives, and is credited as an "Platinum Expert Author" by EzineArticles.com Internet Directory.

Find more extensive details about healthcare frustrations and how to avoid them by using easy and simple tactics and strategies outlined on this website.

http://www.HealthCare-Toolbox.com

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