Managing partner Steve Brooks joins us for Friday’s Inside Look by Brooks, hosted at 3pm EST every Friday on our Facebook page. On today’s episode, Steve speaks on his personal experience navigating the medical world.

It can be a very difficult, confusing process. For this reason, Brooks Law Group partners with all clients to make the process as quick and painless and possible.

Transcript

Good afternoon. Steve Brooks here for Friday’s Inside Look By Brooks. Welcome to this beautiful Friday. It’s nice and hot outside, but I’m loving it.

So, today, just from a human standpoint, has been a really tough day here in the office. We had some wood floors that needed to be sanded down and revarnished. The wood floor people assured us that they would come in at night and do it, and there would be no smells the next day. We walk in this morning and we’re overwhelmed by the fumes. So some employees went home sick. Then we had a leak in a wall. It’s just been one of those kind of days.

Enough with the problems, I’m very blessed in many other ways, but we all have our days where things seem to crop up and today has been that day for me. Tomorrow is my birthday, so I’m looking forward to a relaxing Saturday.

I wanted to talk today about navigating the medical world. You know, my mother recently suffered a serious infection. She’s elderly, but she’s very smart and quick. She’s very alert and together, but when she went to the hospital to fight this infection, her doctor that she’d been seeing for years and years apparently, she didn’t know, that her doctor would not follow her to the hospital.

The clinic she used had what we call a hospitalist. They sent a hospitalist, who had no connection to my mother, no relationship with her. So my mother had a hard time communicating with this person. And the person, although I’m sure she had my mother’s medical history, didn’t have the relationship and knowledge of my mother’s personal condition. It was a tough thing to navigate, and us as family, weren’t getting the feedback we needed because we didn’t know who the doctor was, what their name was, who to call.

Then they had to put my mother into a rehab facility for a few weeks to help fight the infection and get her mobility back. And again, a different doctor is now seeing her in the rehab. We don’t know who the doctor is, who to contact, and it was just a huge mess. My mother has a college education, she’s a smart person. She had trouble navigating that with the help of her two attorney sons and her daughter. It just reminded me how sometimes we as attorneys forget when our clients come in, you know, they’ve got to navigate that same medical world. It’s not easy.

The Brooks Law Commitment

So we have made a decision here at the Brooks Law Group to really try to line up with our clients side-by-side to help them navigate that world. We kind of interplay in that world all of the time. We know the local doctors and the doctors in the communities and areas that we serve. In Tampa and Lakeland and Winter Haven, and all over Hillsborough and Polk County and throughout the rest of Florida where we serve.

You, as a client of ours, can look to us for help if you don’t understand what your doctor is telling you. You can look for help for guidance in doctors that treat the kind of condition you may have suffered as a result of an accident. We can help you come up with a medical management plan and to make sure that you’re getting the kind of help that you need. We know it’s tough. It is complex. It was so eye-opening to go through that with my mother. So we made a commitment as a firm to really step up our efforts in that regard, from the day you come in, to help make sure that you’re treating with the right specialty. That if you’re needing tests, it isn’t getting ignored and somehow the ball is getting dropped. And so especially during the first 45-60 days, when doctors are figuring out what exactly is wrong with you. Do you have a herniated disc? Do you have a broken bone? Do you have any kind of severe soft tissue injury? To make sure that you’re getting to the right specialist and that you’re getting the right tests, so that they can get you to the right specialist. So we have upped our game there, I promise you we’re going to do a great job with that.

Other than that, that’s all I wanted to talk about today. I’ve missed the last few weeks as I’ve been out of town, I’ve been sick, but I’m back. We’re going to recommit to doing this every Friday at 3pm, so I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend. I know I’m going to try to enjoy it. I look forward to seeing you next Friday at 3 o’clock for Friday’s Inside Look by Brooks. If you have any questions about anything, give me a shout at steve (at) brookslawgroup.com. I’ll be glad to converse with you and try to respond to your questions. Thanks for joining me today, see you next week!

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Stephen K. Brooks
Author: Stephen K. Brooks

Steve was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. As was the practice for new doctors his father worked day and night during his medical residency at Charity Hospital there. Steve comes from a long line of doctors. His father, his grandfather, his great grandfather, even two uncles were all specialists and/or surgeons in their chosen medical specialties, including internal medicine specialist, obstetrics / gynecology, neurosurgery and general practice / surgery. His great-great grandfather was the Surgeon General of Ohio during the Civil War.