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If your condition can easily be resolved by waiting a little and letting your body recover, an honest doctor will tell you so. I wonder if an AI will ever risk

If your condition can easily be resolved by waiting a little and letting your body recover, an honest doctor will tell you so. I wonder if an AI will ever risk not recommending you to see a doctor.

trollbridge 1y ago
An AI would absolutely tell you not to go to a doctor unless it’s got a prompt trying to keep it from saying that.
tmpz22 1y ago
Which begs an important question. To what extent is American healthcare built around liability? There are a lot of innocuous things built into the healthcare system, like gating the cough syrup that gets you really high easily, behind a visit to a provider, that many people are just ignorant of as a virtue of the current setup. When we disrupt fields that we are not experts in we often miss oceans of nuance.
AStonesThrow 1y ago
No, they will not, actually. At least in the lower-middle, Medicaid spectrum of care. Physicians at this level serve the labor market, and everything they do is ordered to keeping you able-bodied and working and on the job and not taking sick days. They have always been reluctant to dispense excuses from work, to document any sort of disability related trouble, or to give advice that does not involve more exercise or more medication. I have honestly approached multiple doctors in multiple health systems to complain about fatigue, syncope, and exhaustion, and they all go to extraordinary lengths to deny that anything is wrong or that anything should change.
- trollbridge 1y ago
  I use Medicaid and have never found that to be the case. In fact, I’d prefer to be back on full work duties, but I’m still on light duty until my next appointment, assuming he restores me to full duty. Providers who are reimbursed via Medicaid have zero incentive specific to Medicaid to not give out work “excuses”, document disabilities and so on. Generally speaking the same providers serve both Medicaid and non-Medicaid patients. Perhaps there are some states where the Medicaid providers are really awful (California?).

If your condition can easily be resolved by waiting a little and letting your body recover, an honest doctor will tell you so. I wonder if an AI will ever risk not recommending you to see a doctor.

trollbridge 1y ago

An AI would absolutely tell you not to go to a doctor unless it’s got a prompt trying to keep it from saying that.

tmpz22 1y ago

Which begs an important question. To what extent is American healthcare built around liability? There are a lot of innocuous things built into the healthcare system, like gating the cough syrup that gets you really high easily, behind a visit to a provider, that many people are just ignorant of as a virtue of the current setup. When we disrupt fields that we are not experts in we often miss oceans of nuance.

AStonesThrow 1y ago

No, they will not, actually. At least in the lower-middle, Medicaid spectrum of care. Physicians at this level serve the labor market, and everything they do is ordered to keeping you able-bodied and working and on the job and not taking sick days. They have always been reluctant to dispense excuses from work, to document any sort of disability related trouble, or to give advice that does not involve more exercise or more medication. I have honestly approached multiple doctors in multiple health systems to complain about fatigue, syncope, and exhaustion, and they all go to extraordinary lengths to deny that anything is wrong or that anything should change.

trollbridge 1y ago
I use Medicaid and have never found that to be the case. In fact, I’d prefer to be back on full work duties, but I’m still on light duty until my next appointment, assuming he restores me to full duty. Providers who are reimbursed via Medicaid have zero incentive specific to Medicaid to not give out work “excuses”, document disabilities and so on. Generally speaking the same providers serve both Medicaid and non-Medicaid patients. Perhaps there are some states where the Medicaid providers are really awful (California?).