My son is 18 and his pediatrician suggested he switch to a primary care manager of adult patients close to his college campus.
We have picked out, as his new primary care manager, an internal medicine doctor who is a participating provider with our insurance and willing to accept new patients. We have initiated the paperwork to make the switch official with the insurance company. (This can take two weeks or more to be official.)
Here is my question - once the transfer is final, I think my son needs to make an appointment for a checku to get a chart started with this new doctor to make my son officially a patient. My husband tells him NOT to make an appointment until he is sick, even if that's six months or a year from now.
My concern is that the doctor might move, retire, stop taking patients or be confused about why a hospital ER would call him about a patient he has never heard of because he has no chart. This could in turn cause complications with our insurance company.
Can you consider yourself the patient of a doctor if you have never seen the doctor?
My husband doesn't believe me when I suggest that naming an insurance company's participating provider as your doctor doesn't actually make him your doctor until you've had an appointment. He insists that other coworkers have signed themselves up as patients of doctors they've never seen and never intend to see until they get sick. They have never filled out any office paperwork with the doctors or had any contact with these doctors except to name them as their PCM.
I’m embarrassed to ask the doctor’s office if my son could fill out the patient paperwork without making an appointment. Do doctor’s offices do this?
Thanks for any guidance you can provide.