We’ve spent more than 12 years working on locating the best health care workers, particularly doctors, to use, and avoiding those who may not be the best, and the conclusions we’ve come to are, firstly, that we’ve each got to do this for ourselves or our loved ones, we’re becoming more and more cynical about the systems that are in place, in New South Wales at least, supposedly to help us with this, and secondly, that with modern technology, doing this is remarkably easy, although, at times, quite a lot of hard work is required.
We’ve largely covered this in our first post on this subject – it boils down to, “Other things being equal, go with the ones who provide the best responses to your letters,” which, these days, amounts to, “Go with the ones who provide the best responses to your emails,” and, “Don’t consider for a moment going with anyone who hasn’t provided you with something in writing.”
If people, doctors, but anyone, have put things in writing, it indicates two things about them. Firstly, that they are into communication – some doctors aren’t into communication even if you are sitting right in front of them. And secondly, that they are accountable for what they do and say.
Of course, with Specialists, in Sydney at least, it’s easy – 99% of them have an ordinary email address readily available, and you shouldn’t consider using one of them that doesn’t for a moment.
Although there’s possibly one proviso to this – perhaps the very best and most established Specialists don’t have an ordinary email address readily available and don’t respond to emails! Of course, responding to emails is a bother, and paying for people to respond to them is an expense, and perhaps the very best Specialists – and we can think of one in particular – have found that they’re busy enough without being involved in either of these things. But to us, it’s still too much of a risk to think of using someone who MAY be like this. We can think of one doctor, in particular, who may APPEAR to be one of the best and well established, who doesn’t respond to emails, who’s an absolute crook who should be in gaol.
But with GPs, in Sydney at least, it’s impossible to find one with an ordinary email address, even an email form, or even a fax number. If one ends up dealing with one like this, having a face-to-face consultation with them, if you can’t send them a letter along these lines, “In my consultation with you today, I understood you to say, blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Have I got this right? Have I left anything out?” even if you have to send it by “snail mail” through Australia Post, and they don’t provide you with at least a “Yes” or “No” answer, you shouldn’t consider continuing to use them.
Hopefully this all comes over as simple and straight forward. But, if it’s not followed, you could end up wasting your time and money, at best, and, at worst, as is the case with one of our readers, you could end up being damaged for life, it can’t be reversed.
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