On the subject of doctors - good GP?

You read my mind! I also need a local Doc right now. Caseopele, can you tell us who this awful Doctor is (or PM me). I've been looking and I don't want to get stuff with your old one!

I love my doc.. Burton Fletcher, M.D. 348 13th Street
Suite 201,Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718) 622-7800

(located between 6th & 7th Avenue). I have always found him to be a good listener and very thorough - with a great sense of humour too! (takes Oxford).

this is not going to be a popular opinion, but i'm throwing it out there anyway.

our local hospitals are sub-par. my experiences at methodist have been atrocious and farcical. in fact, you'd only get me back into methodist if i were unconscious and bleeding copiously from the head. LICH is good, but not great. maimonedes is a really good, solid place, but it's in bay ridge.

if i choose a local doctor, he/she has to have priveleges (sp?) at a good hospital (read: manhattan, unfortunately. downtown, so it's easy to get hthere from here) or i'll find someone else. and, sadly, many of the local doctors don't. i mean, it wish i could have a local, fabulous doctor you can see whom i trusted and relied on and get good care from. but finding one is half the battle: if i get sick and i have to go to the hospital, i need to know my doctor will be someplace medically exceptional.

i don't know that these aren't things we think about when we choose MDs. i do, because my dad was a cardiologist, and the doctors at methodist have been quite snappish when i've asked where they went to med school and trained (my legal right, btw. i don't want to to see a doctor who went to med school in the carribean because he/she couldn't get into one in the states...). and when i moved here i was thrilled to have what i thought would be a good hospital (aforementioned sucky methodist) nearby because they are affiliated with columbia, but the place is a trainwreck. After spending a week a year ago in the hospital (not in brooklyn) for an infection, i can tell you that without the exceptional doctor and nursing care (and administrative, too, an area where methodist is severely lacking to the point of really botched care) i might not be here right now typing this.

just food for thought. obviously not something to worry about with, say, a dermatologist or dentist or psychiatrist.

shishkab, i'll try not to be obnoxious and say that you're lucky you came out alive... which with an emergency you'd be lucky to come from anywhere.

i'm glad to hear this story, because it's so opposite of every experience i've ever had or witnessed there, and all the experiences i've heard from others who've been there. i won't get into the list of them, because it's a long list, but the fact that i had to pull a shirley maclaine on the maternity ward for my friend who'd just had a c-section had to wait over an hour for drugs and was writhing and crying in pain on her bed. it was horrifying.

regardless, i'm glad someone went in and had a good experience. and *wherever* you go, or anyone goes, keep in mind that if at all possible you should have someone with you to act as your advocate. health care in this country has gotten so bad that the thought of being in the hospital without one frightens me.

I recommend Dr. Fletcher too. He definitely listens to what you say, and if you ask questions about treatments or even how things work in the industry (e.g. with insurance or how he finds out about new research) he takes the time to explain.

The GP is a dying breed, incidentally. My cousin was thinking of going to med school, and said her teachers are steering premed students away from internal medicine because the malpractice insurance is so high. I asked Dr. Fletcher about this and he said it's true - in fact, there's a shortage of GPs in the US, and most new ones here are immigrants. Eventually the GP just won't exist anymore.

Scary, no? Who will we go to when we don't know what's wrong?

My cousin is thinking of going that route, because NPs don't need malpractice insurance. But doesn't a nurse practitioner have to work under the supervision of an MD? I don't understand how that solves the doctor's insurance problem...

caseopele, i was glad for your long reply -- don't apologize !!

yeah, finding a doctor who is compatible with you is not an easy prospect these days. and lord, you are talking to the right person about that -- now i'm gonna tell you a little bit of my story. in my particular situation i spent 15 years trying convince a doctor, any doctor, that something was wrong with my heart. since i was quite young at the time (this was back in the 80's), i was told by more than one doc that "girls simply don't get heart troubles". one went so far as to give me a referral to a psychologist, since as he put it, "i can find nothing organically wrong with you, so it's all in your head." WTF?!?!? well, jump forward 2 decades and now modern medicine admits that women's cardiac healthcare has been WOEFULLY inadequate. sure enough, for all those years i had been misdiagnosed time and time again. i was finally diagnosed 7 years ago with the exact condition i thought i had, and i was so happy i cried. my new cardiologist, a woman , told me not to be scared and that my condition was relatively mild in the grand scheme of things. i explained to her that i wasn't sad, i was relieved; i was finally vindicated and always knew that jerk who told me it was all in my head was wrong but i just couldn't prove it. she hugged me and told me this was why she went into cardiology, and said she was sorry for the shame i carried all those years, and promised that this was a new day for women's health. (sound the triumphant women's healthcare trumpets -- toot toot! :-' :-' )

so i'm telling you my story (and yes, all of it is true. except the trumpets. i just added those for effect ) for no other reason than this: keep researching your condition and your medications. if you can, stay on top of the latest research thru medical journals, et al. if you are convinced that the meds are causing this problem, you are most likely correct. now a lot of doctors would jump on me for saying that, but no one knows your body like you do. if new therapies come out, consider trying them. if it's not being adopted here in NYC, then travel outside of it and go somewhere else. in my case, the cutting edge stuff was coming out of cleveland, OH and framingham, MA. i was in touch with folks at both places and kept my proverbial finger on both pulses. as i mentioned in a previous post: Arm Yourself With Knowledge.

stay strong, sweetie!

Just lurking when I saw this thread...

I'd like to add my vote for Dr. Fletcher, as well. I've been seeing him for several years now and would strongly recommend him. He's a vanishing breed: accessible, patient, and thorough - in a phrase, old school. I'm glad to see that others have appreciated his service as well.

FurryGreyBOy wrote: It's beginning to look like we have a Burton Fletcher fan club here...!

You know it. I keep all his referrals in a scrapbook.

shishkab, if i believed every doctor who told me i had nothing wrong with me, well, i might be dead. my dad was a physican (old school), so it's been hard growing up getting amazing care because of who we knew, and then being a grown up and finding out that care out here in the real world can be really, really sucky.

in the last years of his life we clashed a whole lot on this issue (he wasn't practicing, so he really hadn't seen just how bad things have become), but i learned to be an advocate in helping take care of him. we'd go to the hospital, the one where he once practiced--FOR YEARS--and they'd assembly line him, and poorly. he never wanted to speak up so i would start getting people moving. it's really, really pathetic how sick people are treated, and i'm glad we agree about someone being an advocate for you.

[quote="lilyhaze"]i just went to dr. fletcher today from the recs on this board...he's great!quote]

Good to hear... did you tell him how you heard about him?

I might be extra partial to Dr. Raffinan because besides being caring and thorough and responsive, he's hella cute (and married). Still, it makes going to the doctor a wee bit more pleasant :-)

Yes, he's married.


Plus he never pooh-poohs the alternative treatments I try for sinuses (I've been getting acupuncture for a few years and that seems to help).

It's hard to get an appointment with Raffinan. If you have the time and patience, just show up during clinic hours and wait to see him. He doesn't do full physicals w.o appoitnment, but he will see you for treatment.