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YourDoctorintheFamily.com |
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Personal Health Care Advocates - PHCAs How to find a PHCA |
It won't be easy, at least not at first.
There are plenty of good doctors
out there who are more than ready to jump to a career as something like a
PHCA, but who have no sense of whether the public is ready for such a
thing.
And indeed, their hesitation is well-founded. In most HMO surveys, 70 – 80% of HMO subscribers report that they are satisfied with the services they receive. Similarly, most patients rate their relationship with their physicians as being good or satisfactory.
These figures reflect a fundamental fact: the performance of HMOs, and the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship, generally is perfectly adequate as long as you don’t get sick. Since the large majority of individuals alive today have not suffered recently from major illnesses, most will not see a need, a priori, for a PHCA. (And HMO surveys, no matter how badly HMOs may treat their sick, will always tend to look good - a fact that HMOs understand explicitly.)
At first, the clientele of PHCAs will come from the minority of health care consumers who have been enlightened through their own experiences, or through those of their loved ones. As time goes by and as the public becomes aware of why PHCAs exist and what they do, then well-informed, health-conscious consumers will begin using PHCAs even before they personally have a bad experience with the health care system.