Neck MRI results

[OakLeaf]

That's a great way to go. Still, I think the #1 effect would be to screen out the 75-80% of doctors who (in my experience) wouldn't bother to read it before walking into the exam room.

(To be fair - some doctors really do want to do better, but insurance companies constrain almost all of them. The choice in today's world for a doctor is either to administer a treatment code that matches the diagnosis code in the insurance company's flow chart - which, treatment codes encompass the duration of a visit - or, to stop accepting insurance entirely, and treat only those who can afford it. That works for some specialties just fine, particularly primary care, but not so much for a surgeon. I've talked with my psychiatrist quite a bit about this. After several bouts in and out of corporate medicine, once she'd paid off her student loans, she took a sabbatical and then came back to practicing but not accepting insurance. It distresses her a lot, not to be able to treat middle and low income patients, but not as much as giving poor care to all her patients distressed her when she did accept insurance.)


My massage therapist was asking me about my resting heart rate yesterday, which made me think of a way to characterize people like us:

"My age is greater than my resting heart rate."