And if you've got heart disease. . .
Receiving a diagnosis of heart disease, whether the diagnosis is yours or a loved one's, is almost enough to stop the heart. You are often plunged - almost immediately and without any preparation - into a brand new world, with its own language and customs (ostensibly controlled by an often-enigmatic priesthood of doctors, but actually controlled from behind the scenes by bottom-line, disinterested bureaucrats,) and where you have to make quick life-and-death decisions with limited, poorly-explained, or intentionally withheld information.The chaos is systematic and, as we've seen, purposeful. While you may be lucky enough to encounter one of the many heroic doctors and nurses who struggle against the tide to see that you get the information and the care you need, as a general rule patients who have the best results are those who take it upon themselves to find out what they need to know and make sure the health care system is giving it to them.
Knowledge is power. Those who run the health care system rely on patients being passive. It's a good strategy, because most patients are passive. If patients passively accept whatever their doctors are offering, then in order to control health care spending all you have to do is to control the behavior of doctors. (This is easy to do since doctors must strive to keep happy those who cut their checks, namely: the government, health plans, and hospital systems. While most doctors want to do right by their patients, in general they will do so only when it does not jeopardize their professional viability.) If patients are not passive, however, the system falls apart. Everyone within the health care system has a hard time withholding appropriate care from patients who insist on getting what they need and who know what they're talking about. So when you have heart disease, the kind of care you receive is ultimately in your own hands.
Getting the care you need
Getting the cardiac care you need requires you to be knowledgeable in two general areas:1) You must learn as much as you can about your (or your loved one's) heart condition.
Learning as much as you can about your heart condition is a prerequisite for getting the care you need. Most docs have a hard time completely withholding important information from their patients, but many have grown adept at imparting certain kinds of information in an offhanded, or nuanced, or in-between-the-lines kind of way, so that it's hard to pick up on if you're not paying careful attention. If you don't have some level of baseline understanding of your conditions, and the kinds of tests and treatments that are available for it, you are likely to completely miss the important subtleties of your conversations with your doctor.
Resources for beginning the learning process can be found in Cardiology 101, but don't stop there. Check other websites (many of which can be found under the "Subjects" heading in the left column of this website,) books, and support groups. But how ever you do it, learn about your (or your loved one's) heart disease. 2) You must learn how to get what you need from the health care system
In the following three parts of this series, we will discuss Managing Your Doctor (the care and nurturing of a doctor-patient relationship,) Managing Your Health Plan (how not to be a passive patient,) and Managing Your Own Health.
This article adapted with permission from YourDoctorintheFamily.com
