Sliding scale is here, and this queer doc feels **expletive of choice** excited! So excited, I would inserted my confetti Bitmoji here!
We all know the cost of medical care in America is ridiculous. According to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services “the average American spent $9,596 on healthcare in 2012, which was up significantly from $7,700 in 2007. It was also more than twice the per capita average of other developed nations.”
Unfortunately, despite all that money, we are not getting better care particularly within the LGBTQAI community. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey reported, “Respondents also encountered high levels of mistreatment when seeking health care. In the year prior to completing the survey, one-third (33%) of those who saw a health care provider had at least one negative experience related to being transgender, such as being verbally harassed or refused treatment because of their gender identity. Additionally, nearly one-quarter (23%) of respondents reported that they did not seek the health care they needed in the year prior to completing the survey due to fear of being mistreated as a transgender person, and 33% did not go to a health care provider when needed because they could not afford it.”
Physicians are not seeing the benefit of the extra spending either. I am a Board Certified Family Medicine Physician and my field has the third highest rate of burnout for physicians according to a Medscape survey. Over half of physicians’ indicate it is excess bureaucracy which contributes to their burnout. The U.S. Department of Health and Human services describes burnout as, “a syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion that results in depersonalization and decreased personal accomplishment at work. The emotionally exhausted clinician is overwhelmed by work to the point of feeling fatigued, unable to face the demands of the job, and unable to engage with others. The burned out clinician may develop a sense of cynical detachment from work and view people—especially patients—as objects. Fatigue, exhaustion, and detachment coalesce such that clinicians no longer feel effective at work because they have lost a sense of their ability to contribute meaningfully.” This is not a doctor I want to see or be!
These reasons were huge driving factors for me in starting QueerDoc- I am a queer physician. I know I can provide high-quality, culturally competent gender affirming care. I also know the hassles of insurance and healthcare systems, so when I chose to start QueerDoc, I chose not to accept health insurance. This lets me decrease my time spent on bureaucracy and increase my time spent with you, my patients- my favorite part of medicine! It also limits access to care because of cost. My goal at QueerDoc is to increase access to care. My solution is to offer sliding scale payment.
Sliding scale for anyone! Imagine another Bitmoji of my happy dance here. To request an appointment with our new sliding scale contact us through our form. To learn more about how sliding scale works at QueerDoc review QueerDoc Sliding Scale.
