Repeated Doctor Shopping in Functional Abdominal Pain Patient and Its Impact: A Case Report

Abstract

Doctor-shopping involves visiting multiple doctors with the same health problem and is often observed in outpatient clinics.[1] Patients visit more doctors when they have a chronic disease or a drug addiction and their health problem remains unresolved despite receiving treatment.[2] The provider-patient relationship is essential to treatment of patient. If patient is visiting multiple doctors at same time without any previous records and even not disclosing previous checkups leads to repeated prescription of medication, increased drug dose consumption and increased healthcare cost as well. Here we report a case of 54 year female with chronic functional abdominal pain with once to twice weekly checkups at different hospital and with different specialist consultations. Keywords: doctor shopping, healthcare cost, drug abuse