COVID-19...What Now?

Covid, Covid, Covid.  This is all we are hearing about 24/7, we can’t escape it.  But today, we are going to look at life after the Covid crisis.

My big concern is what will happen to health care in the future.  Our health care system has been broken for a long time, we wait on hold to make appointments, wait at our  providers office to be seen, our visits are frequently short, (providers need time to put their notes and orders in the computer) and thus unsatisfactory as eye contact is missing.

So, what does the future hold?  How many of us have missed our preventive care visits, i.e. mammograms, dexa scans, immunizations, eye appointments, pap smears.  How long will we have to wait to get them? 

Doctors will see less patients, waiting rooms will not be full, in fact, hospitals are discussing having people possibly wait in their cars until it is time to be seen.  We will all have to maintain social distancing, and we don’t know for how long.

This lends the question, as to who is responsible for your preventive care.  It would be wonderful if all of our providers would take call us, remind us of the visits we missed, and what we need to stay healthy, beyond Covid.  But, that probably won’t happen. 

In a future blog, I will discuss preventive care, what is recommended, at what ages and time interval.  I will also discuss how you can learn to keep your own record, because nobody cares about your health as much as you.