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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I feel like I have great dental and eye care, but anything else is ... mediocre. The appointment might be fine, but [b]being able to communicate with my doctors outside of them is so hard[/b] I don't even bother most of the time. And the front desk people at my main Dr's office are really hostile. They're forever pushing me to fill out some mental health forms. I know I'm depressed - no need to discuss it with my doctor who only allocates a set amount of time for each patient - we won't solve lifelong depression in 12 minutes.[/quote]

Honest question, why do you think you should be able to communicate directly with your doctor without paying them for their time?  Even if you were willing to pay for a 15 minute phone call, how many hours per day should your doctor allocate towards those phone calls?  This obviously means there would be a wait for a phone call appointment too, since so many people want to talk to their doctor on the phone.  And of course that means the doctor has fewer office visits now as well.  Should doctors work 90 hours a week and take phone calls from patients on weekends and holidays for free?  Should they forego taking a lunch break?  I sometimes don't understand what people want from us.

If you cut my patient panel down to about a quarter of what it is right now, I'd love to spend more time with patients and personally answer their calls.  I would!  I could do research on their behalf, I could learn more every day, it would be great.  But then to cut costs, we'd no longer be able to offer a ton of stuff.  No more in-office labs- no more rapid flu /covid tests, no more rapid strep tests, no more in house bloodwork for simple stuff.  No more medical assistants or front desk associates.  Probably no more EMR which is expensive too- but this actually isn't allowed, so, scratch that.  Even with these cuts, we'd go under. [/quote]

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