Why do I keep getting calls from a doctor’s office in my neighborhood that I’ve never been to?
This is actually a fairly easy question to answer: equal parts 1) I’m reasonably certain that this particular doctor was the doctor randomly assigned as my primary care physician (by my insurance), though I changed it pretty immediately; 2) This office clearly REALLY wants patients.
Their approach is pretty off-putting and has gone through a few permutations since September. Why September? Maybe to precede open-enrollment period. The first message the secretary (I assume that’s who he was) left just asked me to call them back. No thanks! Two weeks later he called back to say, “the doctor would like to speak with you and see you.” I’m sure she would…but again, no thanks. I don’t mean to sound totally dismissive, but by this point I was also having to call people to question why I was suddenly enrolled in Medicaid, so I was already making more phone calls than I wanted to make regarding services I never requested.
I believe I grumpily deleted the voicemail I received in December, but it included the laughable tidbit, “The doctor needs to see you for a follow-up appointment.” Following up, I suppose, on the ghost of an initial appointment that they really would have liked me to have. In January he upped his tactics further by cautioning, “We received a letter from your insurance that we need to do a physical check on you.” And, actually, I find that fairly believable, because my insurance is just as likely to have lost my change-of-PCP or whatever. However, if I check my insurance’s website, it lists the provider I requested, NOT this doctor whose secretary is so relentless. And this week, the voicemail said, “We received a letter from your insurance and we have to do some tests on you,” and I’m really tired of it. But too stubborn to try to stop it by calling them and saying “Stop calling me; I have a PCP and it’s not Dr. ______.” Also, I want to see if he’ll escalate further and tell me that my test results don’t look good or something along those lines (I don’t actually wish that – it’s depressing that this series of calls seems to be an unethical way of increasing business – but I am curious).
So what kind of tests do you think I “need” to have done, per my insurance (“”)? I can almost guarantee that I’ve had more tests done over the past few years (come on, I had my immunity titers checked!) than most people in my demographic, although, given that this office has never had me as a patient or received any kind of information about me (except, apparently, my name from my insurance or perhaps through some sort of black market data sale), they wouldn’t know that.
