> The way it's supposed to work is that the general practitioner rules out a bunch of stuff, and then starts referring to specialists who can diagnose/treat the

> The way it's supposed to work is that the general practitioner rules out a bunch of stuff, and then starts referring to specialists who can diagnose/treat the rare things. You missed a whole bunch in that progression. You forgot the insurance companies for one thing. And you are wrong about the diagnosis process for Lupus. My Primary Care gave me the worst test for diagnosis ANA levels for Lupus. It came up negative. Therefore, I could not see a rheumatologist even though I had documented (MRI) spinal arthritis, kidney problems, and all the other symptoms. When I found out it was a bad test I demanded they did the correct one it came up positive. So you see, when they do not know what is going on, the give up. They do not dig deeper. The process is a failure for people with chronic illnesses. The better way to deal with it is to have fewer specialist, get rid of insurance companies, and just have more doctors that can spend more time with their patients and learn more in the process. Primary care doctors need to know more and investigate more. And the only reason specialists time is extremely valuable is because they make sure there are not a lot of them.