Another terrible healthcare experience

I decided I needed to get a PCP… traditional medicine, my health plan, and my life insurance application questionnaire keep telling me I need one. I’m a medical doctor, from a family of doctors, with a lot of doctor friends, so I tend to think of that network as more than enough to cover me. But, for once, I thought “maybe there’s something about having an objective 3rd party following me over a period of time”.

So I looked for a doctor in my area — Dallas’ historic Oak Cliff neighborhood. As you might’ve heard me rant before… there’s literally no objective way to “find a good doctor” in America (or probably anywhere else). Our industry has largely refused any sort of meaningful judgement or quantification of our relative performance. Despite the fact that statistically half of doctors have to be in the bottom 50th percentile, you’d be hard pressed to find one that admits its them.

I called the closest doctors office near me — Methodist Family Health Center. Turns out, they don’t accept my insurance. Great, I get to do more research on what that process is like to ask them to take my insurance (said no one ever, except me, since this is largely an experiment anyway). Granted, I have a non-traditional insurance type — Sana Benefits — a small-and-medium business (SMB) third-party administrator (TPA). I’ll save that explanation for another day, but they have a specific process to on-board any provider that doesn’t take the insurance, and their self-reported success rate is 95%.

So I submit the office’s information… wait 2–4 months, and presto! A rejection that said Methodist Health is no longer accepting new insurance types. Great, I get to do more research on using the Sana Pay Card, to see what it’s like for providers that absolutely refuse to enter a contract with a new payer (said no one ever).

I ask for a new patient appointment anyway, and tell them I’ll be self-pay. The next available appointment is 3 months out. Great, I get to build up the anticipation of meeting the doctor that I’m sure will be my PCP for life (said no one ever).

3 months later (this morning), I go into the doctor’s office. It’s surprisingly empty — like completely empty (so empty, it makes me wonder why it took 3 months to get an appointment). They want to run my insurance again… great, go for it. They say it won’t work, no problem, I anticipated as much. I tell them I’ll pay with a Sana Pay Card and I’ll just need an itemized bill to submit to my insurance. And then she broke me…

“Sorry, you’ll need to call central billing to get an itemized bill. We can’t make you one here.” This is where I draw the line… I’m not spending what I’m certain will be hours and multiple attempts to 1) get through to their billing department, 2) explain who I am, 3) explain why I’m calling, 4) have them question why I need what I’m asking for, 5) have someone direct me back to the office for what I need, or 6) tell me they only grant those requests in person. I’m not playing this game anymore. This is NOT worth the research effort.

I politely say “no thank you”. And cancel my appointment. I write a terrible Google review (yes, I’m that guy), and I leave frustrated, annoyed and disheartened.

Why is healthcare so awful to interact with?
Why is no one responsible for my experience?
Why does it not matter to them that they lost my business?
Why do they put so many barriers up to becoming a patient?

Sorry to call you out Methodist… but not really. Just moving into my neighborhood doesn’t make you my neighborhood doctor.