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When I was growing up and we went to the family doctor he was just that our “Family Doctor.” Anything we needed we got from him, x-rays, meds, minor procedures, blood tests were all done in his office. There were no referrals to specialists, because he did it all.
Now it’s an entirely different experience. With the invention of HMO’s and managed care, healthcare has become compartmentalized and myopic. Everyone is a “specialist” now. Your primary care physician has become more of a place of triage than one of overall care. Where once you had everything in one office now those services have been pushed out to multiple providers. Get you blood taken at lab A, x-rays are across town and the to review the results see doctor B over here. By the time you get the basics done, you’ve been all around town and seen 3-4 different providers, all of who don’t communicate with each other.
Medicine has become so specialized with doctors only focusing on their one specialty, that a lot of the time the one who gets lost in the process is “you” the patient. The body is not a bunch of individual parts that work independent of each other, but instead a complex interconnected network that is constantly being affected by it’s other parts. This process has created a disconnect when it comes to treating patients as a people and not just a bunch of random parts.
This is why so many people are looking toward alternative health care providers to meet their needs. The holistic providers have a tendency to take an inventory of the whole body, both mentally and physically to create a treatment plan that best works for the patient. By looking at the person as a whole they are able to quickly determine the true cause of your problem instead of chasing multiple symptoms.
Now don’t get me wrong, western medicine is essential to our longevity and plays a necessary part in our overall health care. But I only wish there was better communication between the specialists to treat people as a whole.
At MetaTouch we pride ourselves on looking at the person as a whole and doing the best we can to find the core issues, while giving our clients the tools to heal and prevent future problems.
So what can you do as a patient in our current healthcare system? Be your own advocate. 9 out of 10 times we know our bodies and what is going on, more so than the 5-minute usual consult with our doctors. Communicate with your physician tell them what is going on, if you have to go to a specialist, make sure you communicate all the symptoms that are going on not just the ones that pertain to that specialist. That way they can have a better understanding of your condition as a whole.
