ANY DOCTOR IS YOUR EMPLOYEE -- YOU ARE PAYING FOR HIS OR HER SERVICES, AND ARE ENTITLED TO GETTING WHAT YOU WANT. DON'T LET THEM BULLY YOU, DISRESPECT YOU OR MANIPULATE YOU.

After 62 years I learned that we patients DO NOT have to put up with crap and should freely tell any doctor if we don't like the way they treat us.

I did this with one cocky male doctor and he tried to insist that I get "anger management" treatment!!! (I had told him he should have told me what pulmonary hypertension was and not let me go on the Internet and scare myself to death! and I told him that he was a "bad" doctor for not communicating with me properly about that condition he told me I had)

He also prescribed tranquilizers for me that caused me to go into congestive heart failure in just five days, despite my insisting I needed to be taking diuretics, which he took me off of. I had sleep apnea and tranquilizers are a NO NO for such conditions, and at the ER the doctors asked me why this DODO didn't give me diuretics!!! That's all they gave me and I was AOK in 45 minutes!! He nearly KILLED ME!!

I CHANGED DOCTORS IMMEDIATELY!!!

Annually should be the norm unless you have a condition that needs more frequent treatment. Some HMO's do have quotas for patients and do deliberately try to get you in for more frequent visits!!!

So, if they won't look at you, call you by name, apologize for keeping you waiting or won't answer your questions, DUMP THEM!!