tragically HIP, no. 1

My first usage of my new health care provider, HIP, went awry when they did not send me a doctor directory for some six weeks after I paid my initial membership dues. Which is to say we got off on the wrong foot.

As such, in order to find a doctor for a long overdue physical, I employed the Find A Provider function on their website, which is where I encountered this screen:

Knowing that I was looking for a Primary Care Physician and not actually angel dust, it seems pretty obvious where I was supposed to click, right?

For reasons that still elude me, it seems, the proper way to find a PCP through the HIP site is to select “non-member” and “specialist,” despite the fact that I am (in fact) a member of HIP and I am in search of a Primary Care Physician. There is no world in which this makes sense.

From this simple mistake sprung a series of confusions about the type of specialist that I was looking for, which will (sadly) have to wait for a future episode of Tragically HIP.