Your doctor CAN'T do this

In this Episode we  discuss  things your doctor can't actually do for you!

How much a medication or procedure will exactly cost you? Where to go to get the imaging study we ordered for you...Nope!

Listen to find out why!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of 4 Vaginas Only. In this episode, we are going to talk about things that your doctor can't actually do for you. Stay tuned. This is gonna be a good one. Let's cue the music. Hello and welcome to 4 Vaginas Only, the podcast about everything female. I'm your host, Dr. Celestine, bringing you important information about understanding your health and body in the way you wish your doctor would actually explain it. Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Celestine, your host of the Four Vaginas Only podcast. In this episode, it's gonna be a little interesting. We're gonna talk about the things that your doctor cannot actually do for you. Now, I thought about this because I get a lot of calls, or really it's my office staff that gets a lot of the calls from my patients that ask for certain things that I actually can't help them with. Now, let's be clear, I try to help my patients with as much as I possibly can, but there are just some things I don't have control over. So we're gonna get into what those things are. Okay, so first and foremost, I'm gonna talk about problems at the pharmacy. Okay, so when I create a prescription, I do it electronically on my computer. I send the prescription in to your pharmacy. So first and foremost, sometimes your pharmacy won't have the medication in stock that I am trying to prescribe. And there is no way that I will know that ahead of time. Sometimes they contact me, sometimes my patients contact me, but your doctor doesn't know what's in stock at the pharmacy. So if something's not there, or if they prescribed a certain prenatal vitamin that that pharmacy doesn't actually carry, then you're not going to be able to get that. You might have to go to a different pharmacy, they might have to order it. The same thing goes for birth controls. Now, these days, there's so many generic names for birth controls. So there are brand names like Yaz or something like that that's marketed. And then there are other companies that have made a generic version of it, which is usually cheaper with the same active ingredients. And every pharmacy kind of carries their own version, their own names of that. So I might prescribe you a certain birth control, but you would get it the same medication, but with a different name. And in a way, I will say this: if you want the brand name, you should tell your doctor to write in on their prescription that you want the brand name. Because if not, you're gonna get the generic version of whatever your pharmacy has, and it's gonna be a completely different name, which still works for a lot of people because it's still the same active medications, but for some people, to be honest, only the brand name works properly. So it's important to clarify that. Also, know that the brand name and the generic name might have different prices from your insurance, and there's no way for me to know exactly how much you're gonna have to pay out of pocket until you get to the pharmacy. That's something to talk to the pharmacist about because they run the medication through your actual insurance before you pick it up for costs. I don't directly control that. Speaking of birth control pills, let's talk about the number of packs of birth control that you can get at one time when you go to the pharmacy. That is actually controlled by your insurance. Your doctor can write however many amounts of packs that they want you to get. It doesn't matter. You're when you get to the pharmacy, they check on how many packs your insurance allows to be distributed to you once you get there. And I can't really change that. Now, just to be clear, going forward, when I say I can't really change that, I mean your doctor in general. Some of these things you have to talk to your insurance company when I mention that, some of these things you have to talk to the pharmacist. It's not your actual doctor that has control over it. Which I've realized after working for, you know, however many years, that that's surprising to a lot of people. So I figured I'd put it in here. Okay. Another thing your doctor can't do is tell you where to go to get any imaging done. So if they order a ultrasound, a mammogram, even I'm sure like chest x-rays and other things that general doctors order that I don't necessarily order, where you should go to get these things performed is based on who accepts your insurance. I can tell you places to go, but I don't always know if they're gonna accept your insurance and what your out-of-pocket costs will be when you go to certain locations. So I always tell my patients to either go through their insurance and find a location to get the imaging study done, or call a few imaging study imaging locations or radiology locations around where you live and see if they accept your insurance. I don't actually have control over where you should go. I can give you the order for the imaging study that we need to have done, but you have to figure out between your insurance and the radiology location where it is you actually should be going to get it completed. Okay, another thing that your doctor can't do is make the decision for you. So when it comes to making treatment decisions or a lot of medical decisions, we talk about something called informed consent. That's where your doctor, such as myself, can talk to you about all of the options that are available to you, the risks and the benefits of each option. And I can give you my recommendation as to one or a few of the things that I think are the best decision. But one, you can refuse what I'm saying. You truly don't have to do what I'm saying to do. It's, you know, it's your body, it's your comfort level, and that's completely okay. And two, sometimes there is no one right decision, and it's really truly up to you. If there's not a medical reason why I'm telling someone they can't have X, Y, and Z medication or X, Y, and Z procedure, and if there's just a plethora of options available, it's really up to your comfort level, what you want to do, how you feel about it to make the final decision. I can work together with you, I will answer all of your questions, but a lot of the times I can't make the final decision for you. Okay, what else are things that your doctor can't do? I will say probably the next thing I want to talk about is the cost of things. I kind of touched on it a little bit, but the cost of your medication, the cost of how much the imaging study will cost you, um, the cost of your surgical procedure. I can't answer those questions. These are questions that are between you and your insurance company. Sometimes our electronic medical record, the computer system that we work on in order to write our notes and prescribe medications, um, especially when it comes to medications, sometimes it'll give us an estimate cost for you, but I don't know your deductible for your insurance. Every patient that sees me has a different insurance. And just think about all the things that you need to select for your insurance. Even people with the same insurance have selected different options. There's no way I'm gonna know that. So I cannot tell you the exact cost for something. You have to either talk directly to your insurance, or if it's a medication, go through the pharmacy. If it's an imaging study, talk to the imaging location. If it's a surgery, I would say probably the best bet is to talk to your insurance company again. I don't know how much you've used of your deductible already within the year. I don't know how it applies to what we're doing. I can't answer that for you. It's really mainly between you and your insurance company what the cost will be for you. All right, now this is another kind of general one, and I'm gonna explain. Now, one other thing your doctor can't do for you is tell you exactly what side effects you're going to have from a medication. Now, I know it sounds wild, right? We're prescribing it to you, we should know. And really, I'm gonna clarify now. We do know kind of what you can expect. But for example, if you've ever looked at or heard one of those commercials that even talks about medication and starts like mumbling really low all of the side effects, and sometimes it can be like 20, 30, 40 side effects that are possible. That's because in studies, in medical studies and with patients, you know, they've seen that these side effects can happen, but it doesn't happen to everybody. So, what I usually tell patients when I'm prescribing certain medications are the most common side effects or side effects that I think might happen to them based off of their past medical history with either other medications or their personal medical problems. But I can't know every side effect that might happen. Um, if you even look at things such as Tylenol, there's multiple side effects that could possibly happen, but the majority of us don't get them. So we can talk about the common things, and I always tell my patients, call me if you're having any weird side effect that you just truly hate or don't understand, call me because we can talk about it then. But I literally can't tell you every possible thing that can happen. We can only talk about the most common. So that's something to know for sure. We're all unique, and I truly think that it's a blessing, but I guess in the medication side effect realm, it can be a little bit of a curse sometimes because we don't truly know. All right, and last but not least, this is very specific to my field of obstetrics and gynecology. But I cannot tell you when you're going to have your baby. I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea. I will tell you, you know, if you're not in labor yet, that it's very common that most people have their babies between one week before their due date and one week after the due date. That's the most common time that you'll deliver. But I don't know. There's such a thing as preterm labor, there's certain things that might happen in the pregnancy. I truly, some people ask me this question as early as the very first visit in the first trimester, and there's no way for me to know that answer. And once you are in the hospital and you're in labor or we're trying to get you into labor with an induction, I again don't know. There's estimates, there's certain things that we look at and how fast you're dilating and how low the baby's head is. But I cannot, if I knew the time and the exact day and time everybody would deliver, I would be a millionaire by now. I'd just be going around from hospital to hospital telling people and getting paid for my services, I guess. But I truly can't tell you the exact time you're gonna deliver. Sometimes I can have an estimate if you're actually in labor, but I won't know the exact answer. And last but not least, I do not know what kind of delivery you will have. I'm not for sure whether it will be a vaginal delivery or a c-section. I would say that myself and many of the OBJNs out there, we're always trying to get a very good and safe vaginal delivery. But I tell my patients, C-sections were created for a reason. Sometimes there are things that go on during the pregnancy or things that go on during the labor where we need to do a C-section. And I don't always know that ahead of time. My goal is always for a vaginal delivery, unless the mom decides she doesn't want one and she just elects to have a C-section, that's fine too. But for most patients that come to me, I will say most want to try to have a vaginal delivery, and that's also my goal. But we talk real realistic, talking about that that's not always possible. And that's why the C-section exists, so that if there's a complication with mom or with baby that we can try to still have a safe delivery, it just might be a C-section. And that's it. Those are the things that your doctor just can't do for you, okay? So take a listen to it, listen to it again, send it to your friends. Um, no, but for real, I like I said in the beginning, really try to do the most that I can, but there are just things that we don't have control over. We follow things as closely as we can. I truly answer all the questions I can. My office is available to answer questions as well all the time. Um, I respond to patients' questions, but some things are truly out of my hands. And we have to work with either pharmacies, imaging locations, hospitals, your insurance company. And sometimes you have to kind of put in the legwork to figure out those answers too, because we can't always do it for you. So that's it. This was a fun one for me to do. I kind of liked it coming up with things that I want people to know out there. And maybe I'll do another one of these someday if I think of some more. But that's it. Thank you guys so much for listening to another episode of the Four Vaginas Only podcast. I am Dr. Celestine. You can catch me at Instagram at Four Vaginas Only, also on Facebook. You can listen to the podcast on all podcast platforms. Um, my website's getting revamped soon, so that'll be up in a little in a few months, and you can catch me on there as well. Email me at drconly.com, and I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye bye.