Making Your Healthcare Work For You!

Do want to get the most from your Healthcare investment? After the monies invested in those ever increasing premiums and deductibles, and after juggling schedules to make those doctor’s appointments, you want to get the most out of your efforts.

So why do so many consumers leave attention to their Health behind when spending their Healthcare dollars? The answer is surprisingly easy.

Framing the Picture

Modern Healthcare is a cooperative relationship between doctor and patient, with defined rights and responsibilities for both parties.

We mostly hear about our rights as patients. How we are entitled to quality Healthcare, all the while our right to medical privacy will be carefully protected by the providers. These rights make us sound like we are valued by the doctors and hospitals who provide us Healthcare services. As we should be!

The flip-side of this cooperation is your responsibilities to your own Healthcare. Just because you have paid someone to provide service, does not mean your responsibilities end there. To get the most, you have to contribute to the Healthcare relationship, as you would in any other relationship.

There’s no free lunch.

Problems With Non-Compliance

Your doctor has a term for you when you do not follow his/her prescriptions. “Non-compliant“. This means that you have not followed directions and it is brutally accurate.

When at least 125,000 American die each year due to poor medication compliance, this is a real problem. Remember that your physician is providing you directions and prescriptions based upon his/her extensive education and experience. The doctor wants you to be the healthiest you can be. You just have to meet the doc halfway for this to happen.

The Easy Solution

As I wrote about last week, advocating for yourself as a Healthcare consumer is vitally important. Your active participation in your own healing is not optional but required.

So besides being the patient empowered by their role in the decision-making process, step up to following the directions of your physician. They have your best interests in mind. If you don’t understand or disagree with doctor’s orders, talk it out with the doctor.

If you are given a prescription, your doctor assumes you will follow through as directed. If you don’t follow through, it’s hard to complain that the doctor didn’t do enough for you.

As with any business relationship, be empowered to negotiate with your doctor. For example, if the prescription is to eliminate fats and salts from your diet, exercise 4-5 times a week, and quit a 30 year smoking habit, talk with your doctor about making these things happen over time. Share how you think you can comply and how you can’t. Remember, it’s a relationship. Work with the doc.

Finding A Happy Place

A lot of chronic conditions (like Diabetes) can be treated with managed care of lifestyle choices, like diet and exercise. Remember that quality Healthcare does not only come from a pill bottle or surgeon’s scalpel.

Yes, you may have to give up some things you’ve grown to like (that aren’t helping your Health) but Life is full of these trade-offs. Acceptance is an important part of growing up.

Your physician is trying to get your Health to a place where you are happy and feel well. It is a give-and-take relationship with the goal of helping you with your Health goals. So give your doc a hand and hold up your end of this doctor-patient relationship. You’ve got everything to gain!

 

It is only when you take responsibility for your life that you discover how powerful you truly are
― Allanah Hunt