Trust your doctor, but tie the camel’s leg

Episode #3 of the Healthcare Beans podcast In this episode, I argue against putting too much faith in good doctors. I know that sounds strange but a well organized care team is what really counts, and this is what people should expect from their local health system. I stress the importance of organized care delivery by sharing a story about my 73 year-old uncle who suffers from multiple chronic diseases. He recovered from a COVID-19 infection back in September 2020, after being treated with Dexamethasone. He had a great doctor but his care team dropped the ball. And when it comes to finding a new doctor, I think healthgrades is a good site to explore. But make sure you read the full profile - the bad stuff is often tucked away at the bottom of a profile. Subscribe to my podcast or check out my site's episode list if you’d like to learn more about US health systems and value-based healthcare. ~ James Transcript Hello healthcare enthusiasts and thanks for tuning into the Healthcare Beans podcast, I’m your host James Haven. This is the 3rd episode in the podcast, and we’re still laying out the fundamental knowledge on healthcare and health systems, and what people should be aware of in order to understand and navigate this complex system. So onto the big question for today – “what exactly is good healthcare?”. And I pose this question for a reason, it is to help people put down a very common, simplistic and ultimately wrong idea of what good healthcare is. Many, many people think good healthcare is all about having a good doctor, and this is NOT true. And I’m going to share a brief story that I think will convince you not to put your full trust in a good doctor. I’d like to share a story about my uncle. He’s 73 years old with chronic liver disease; he underwent a triple bypass heart surgery about 2 years ago, and struggles to maintain a healthy blood pressure. He’s certainly not in good shape, but my aunt takes great care of him, staying on top of all his medications and his diet – so he’s pretty lucky in that respect. And to be fair he lived much of his life on his own terms, eating and drinking whatever he wanted; and ignoring exercise. Back in August, my uncle contracted COVID-19. We were surprised to hear this because he and my aunt were social distancing in a small apartment in CT, but social distancing is not a guarantee that you won’t get sick. And as expected, my uncle developed the usual symptoms: high fever, aches, and difficulty breathing. Now it’s common knowledge that COVID-19 is very serious for the elderly, especially older people with chronic disease. So we had zero faith that he would ever leave the hospital; our concern was making sure my aunt felt supported and getting ready to help make funeral preparations. He spent about 8 days in the hospital, and during that time the doctor would keep in contact with my family every day, letting us know how he’s doing, because (of course) we could not visit him ourselves; answering our questions, and making sure he’s getting the care he needs. She (the doctor) treated him with a steroid, Dexamethasone, and he started feeling better pretty quickly where each day was better than the previous day. If you haven’t heard of this drug, definitely look it up, the findings are very positive (doctors are using this drug in combination with other drugs) – all the major news outlets are reporting on it; again, it’s called dexamethasone and I have a link in the show notes so you could click on that and learn more about it. I can’t say enough good stuff about this doctor, she was super-responsive, compassionate and brought my uncle back from the brink of death. There was even an incident where the hospital (someone from nursing administration) tried to discharge him early, at around 5 days, and we were concerned about that timing, we thought it was too short, so we discussed that with his doctor, and she decided to keep him inpatient for 3 more days.