How Was Your Visit Today?

High marks on online ratings can benefit urgent care and E.R. doctors, but don't let their concern about those scores influence the care you receive. Here's how

- JANICE M. HOROWITZ

MORE ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER

Communicate to your doctor that “what you value most is not necessarily active treatment, but the time it takes to explain why a medicine or test may or may not be needed.”

Taking charge of your health means more than following expert advice blindly. It includes educating yourself about hidden influences that may affect your care—and ways you can signal to your doctors that you’re not just interested in a quick fix, but in the right answer. Veteran former Time health reporter and host of public radio’s Dueling Docs: The Cure to Contradictory Medicine, Janice M. Horowitz, deftly exposes background forces that can compromise care in her new book, Health Your Self (Post Hill Press, September 21). In this excerpt, she discusses how patient satisfaction surveys can skew doctors’ treatment recommendations to your detriment and what you can do to ensure your doctors dispense the best medicine.

IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, YOU IGNORED YOUR HEALTH woes large and small this past year, terrified that if you stepped foot in a medical center, packed with people sick from COVID-19, you’d wind up infected. Sometimes you did fine: the splinter worked its way out, your sniffles vanished. But other times, disastrously. Someone I know was too terrified to go to the E.R. when his vision turned blurry and by the time his wife convinced him, it was too late.

Now, with some measure of tepid freedom in many areas of the country, thanks to vaccines and fewer COVID deaths, we’re willing, at last, to take care of ourselves.