One of our readers was referred by his GP to the Urologist Dr Andrew Brooks of Westmead, as he was waking up frequently during the night needing to urinate. (We have written elsewhere on this blog about Dr Brooks.)
It seems clear that Dr Brooks’ approach was – “This bloke has an enlarged prostate gland so I won’t get involved at any of the intricacies of his problems, I’ll just tell him a TURP operation will fix all his problems and collect $3,200 from him for less than an hour of my time in doing it and send him on his way – won’t warn him that the operation will affect his sex life detrimentally by taking away his ability to ejaculate in case it turns him off having the operation, and, of course, won’t respond to any of his complaints if the operation doesn’t work for him, which may well happen.” (As it turned out, it didn’t work for him.)
In researching this matter, the reader located another urologist who says he specialises in “the medical management of enlarged prostate glands,” and for whom it would appear TURP operations are something that he only considers as a last resort – he doesn’t even do them.
And guess who would be making the most money? Our guess is that the second Urologist would be lucky to ever make $1,000 for less than an hour of his work, let alone $3,200.
The only problem is that the second Urologist is in New York. We are wondering if there are any like him in Sydney. This is a continuing story.
And here’s another example of what we’re talking about.
Another of our readers was referred to Dr Kerrie Meades, Ophthalmologist, in early 2010 about the double vision he was experiencing, which, in particular, was making him a danger to himself and others when he was driving a car.
She reported back to the referring Optometrist that his cataracts may be the problem. And she convinced the reader that double vision could be caused by very serious matters, so that he spent 3 or 4 hours in her rooms seeing her and one of her colleagues, which cost him $3-400, as they struggled to come up with something and they came up with nothing.
She went even further to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission when the reader made a complaint to them eabout her in 2011, saying the reader had been a “naughty boy” for not having a cataract operation when it was “clinically indicated,” and how double vision was such a difficult condition to diagnose and treat, blah blah blah.
Subsequently, the reader saw Dr Ross Fitzsimons, who in just a few minutes told him, (1) it was incredibly unlikely that his double vision was caused by anything serious since it had been developing over such a long time, but, if he wanted to remove any doubt, he could have an MRI of his brain – which he did, and it was clear, and (2) glasses with prisms in them would solve the problems he had when he was driving a car, (which neither Dr Meades or her colleague had mentioned,) – which he got, and the help they gave him was almost miraculous, and, (3) and, by the way, his cataracts didn’t need anything done on them yet.
Guess who made the most money out of the reader? – Dr Meades, of course, and she would have made a lot more if she’d been able to talk him into having her operate on his cataracts.
As a post script, the reader saw a top notch Optometrist and Dr Fitzsimons again in 2014 and they both thought he was years away from needing any operation on his cataracts.