My wife suffers from chronic back pain with severe degeneration in several of her disks. She also suffers from chronic knee pain.
For over a year now my wife has being seeing a pain management doctor. The last 6 months she has been on a Fentanyl patch and has done a lot to reduce her constant pain to more tolerable levels. She can now semi -function. Take or children to school and pick them up. Do chores around the house and overall have somewhat of a life. Before the pain was so bad that she was becoming severely depressed. While things are not perfect at least the Fentanly has allowed her to function a lot better. It is frustrating sometimes because people that are not living with or experiencing constant pain themselves don't understand how much pain that sometimes someone can go through. For a while the pain level was so bad that my wife was almost suicidal in her depression. However ever thing is tightly controlled for her pain medication. For her their is no refills. She has to go in every 30-days to get a new script for a refill. The DR will evaluate her and see if any adjustments need to be made. Overall the pain management DR she works with is fairly good and they do a good job from what I can see of trying to weed out the people just wanting to get the pills. We are in CA but I have heard in other states that things are getting fairly bad for people trying to get the proper medication for their pain management.
I'm impressed that he's still in business as a private practice. Exceedingly difficult to do nowadays, especially as a solo practitioner - unless one enjoys working extremely long hours, always being on call, making little take home pay, and fighting bureaucracy daily, I suppose.
What's going to be interesting albeit tragic is to see health care fall apart. We need reform but our savoir has no idea what that means. It's all regulations and simplistic concepts.
I'm impressed that he's still in business as a private practice. Exceedingly difficult to do nowadays, especially as a solo practitioner - unless one enjoys working extremely long hours, always being on call, making little take home pay, and fighting bureaucracy daily, I suppose.
He stays in business because he's the only doctor in the practice. He sets his own schedule, sets his own hours and only admits to one hospital. He's actually a great doctor. Extremely personable, doesn't overbook and even for just a routine physical spends like 45 minutes face to face with you. Can't complain at all.
Piling shit on top of shit is no way to create a functional system. Needs to be scrapped, and rewritten. Now the logistics or plausibility of that? .... Right.
There are ways to accomplish a great deal but the biggest obstacles are ignorance and politics.
And if I may chip in I think ignorance is the biggest hurdle. Even more than politics. We can change how the system operates and even how it is paid for but until people aren't so ignorant to how health care works,(Hint: its not Burger king you can't always have it your way) then I fear nothing will change.