Scheduling doctor appointments

Well, this sounds embarrassing, but I scheduled a doctor’s appointment by myself for the first time.

I know how to use the internet and look up lists of doctors, but I don’t know how to actually choose a doctor.

I asked my mother for tips. She told me: “Call the medical group first, then the insurance company.”

First I tried calling my insurance company. Their support number was conveniently obfuscated on their website, underneath the “I want to buy insurance packages” advertisement. My goal was to get a list of in-network doctors who do annual physical checkups.

I called the support number, and the yapping of the robo-voice gave me anxiety.

I waited until a real person responded. Then my connection had issues and it went silent. I said, “Hello? Hello?” several times but no response.

After several seconds, I heard a voice: “—was saying ‘hello?’ a lot so maybe the connection was broken, can you come see if there’s an issue as I pull up the info?'” and then the call ended.

I redialed the same number, but hearing robo-voice advertising made me so angry that I hung up immediately.

Several days later, I called the local medical group as I should have. I asked about getting a Primary Care Doctor. They told me to use their doctor finder website. At least I got the name of the department: Internal Medicine.

You know, this whole time I thought it would be Family Doctor or General Practitioner or something more friendly-sounding. Maybe this differs region by region.

As a kid, my checkups were done with a pediatrician but I’m not a kid anymore so I shouldn’t ask a pediatrician. I guess when I’m old I’ll have to get a geriatrician.

Why can’t we just say “doctor for kids” or “doctor for elders?” Like, “doctorforkids” has less syllables than “pediatrician.” Isn’t “doctorfrkids” like how the Germans name things? Like how “kindergarten” just means “kidgarden?”

I mean, loanwords can be fun, but it is infuriating to read a list of doctors and half of the specialties are written in bastardized Greek. I bet Greek people have an easier time looking up doctors.

Anyway, I searched for Internal Medicine doctors who were accepting new patients, then called their office. While making an appointment, I specified the doctor’s name. If you don’t do this they might book you a random physician.

You can make fun of me for getting so anxious about phone calls, but I don’t like listening to robo advertisement. This whole process just feels exhausting. I’m gonna have to do this every time I change insurance? What happens if I lose insurance? What if my doctor dies or retires or switches careers?