The model on which the medical profession has operated for 100 years and more is that we, as the consumers of their services, are expected to traipse from doctor to doctor finding out for ourselves in face to face interviews who is likely to be able to help us with any problems we might have.
This model, of course, has been subject to two improvements which sometimes help and sometimes don’t.
Firstly, doctors are grouped into specialisations like urologists, cardiologists, psychiatrists and so on, but these days these are such broad categories that often, as medical knowledge becomes more and more detailed, they don’t give us the information we need.
Secondly, GPs have been built up into semi-geniuses who always know exactly who is best to deal with any particular problem, when often there are instances where they come over as not seeming to know or care, to the point where sometimes you suspect that they must be getting kickbacks for their referrals.
To overcome these problems we have got into the habit, for ourselves and our readers, of sending emails to doctors asking whether helping with particular problems are within their areas of specialisation – and this often works extremely well.
But, we recently did this with Dr Stephen Reddel, who had actually been recommended by another doctor, (not a GP,) and got this response.
It made us livid! We were treated as a naughty school child by some completely ignorant twerp of a person, whoever he or she might be, raving on about “clear professional and medico-legal reasons,” which is absolute rubbish.
What “clear professional and medico-legal reasons” could there possibly to prevent providing a simple “yes” or “no” answer?
But, as we might have suspected with the Stephen Reddels of this world, this response was just part of a cunning plan to get us to pay $440 to have a face to face consultation with him to find out whether helping people with the problems we’d described were within his areas of specialisation. To view the correspondence in full, use this link.
Presumably Dr Reddel has enough patients prepared to hand over $440 to get information that could be provided in a few seconds over the internet for him to continue to have people like us, (and presumably our readers,) treated as naughty school children!