We have been working on health care services consumers interfacing with the medical profession for nearly 8 years now, and we have come to many conclusions, but these three stand out:-
- GPs often don’t have the slightest idea as to which specialists would be best for their patients’ needs.
- Health care services consumers have to do a lot of research themselves to protect themselves against this.
- The specialists who are the most likely to be the best to deal with are those who provide the best answers to emails sent to them, as, to us, the better the answers the greater the likelihood that they are “into” communication and likely to stand by what they do and say, which lots of doctors aren’t.
We realise that perhaps not all of our readers will agree with us on the above, but for those who do, one of the things we are working on is putting together lists of specialists and their ordinary email addresses. Use this link to go to our list of Sydney Urologists.
Our suggestion is that you send the same email to a number of specialists – the more the better, but at least 10 – asking if helping people with your symptoms is within their area of expertise, and, if not, if they can recommend anyone else.
You should be able to send one out every 2 minutes when the email addresses are readily available to you.
We’ll be surprised if, if you do this, that at least 1 or 2 don’t stand out.
At the very least you should do this with any specialists your GP refers you to. If you don’t get a good response, alarm bells should ring.