Friday, March 18, 2022

Why I sometimes hate doctors/their offices

"Since you have seen a cardiologist, we have to have clearance that you can have anesthesia before we can schedule your surgery, we'll contact him."

Week later, "What's the status on this?"
"We sent the request, we've heard nothing back.  You could call them to see where it is."

Call cardio office, two days running: "Leave a detailed message."

Get home evening of second try, they called the wrong damned number, not the one I specifically left in both calls, to say "We haven't received anything and know nothing about it, please call us back."

Sometimes I really want to beat people with a large, spiked club.


Added: yes, I'm in a bad mood.  This is after having to see an arthritis specialist, who looked at the x-rays and said "You have arthritis in multiple places, this is going to cause real problems!"
Yeah, now tell me something I didn't already know.
"How are the meds working?  No difference you can tell?  Well, it can take a couple of months for them to really show any effect."
I was told that last time, we're back to 'something I don't know.'

Bleep.  I need a rest from all this crap.

7 comments:

Mike said...

Ah yes, the "golden years". I haven't found anything golden about getting old. Nothing works and when it does it hurts.

Good luck with all of that!

Steve said...

Had a discussion with someone a while back regarding just this thing.....he was of the opinion that it was the fax machines that didn't work correctly; and the referred doc didn't get the referrals.
I contend that it was the low level menial workers in the office that don't give a flip about other people.
Once the corporations that actually own the clinics found out they didn't need educated folks, like registered nurses to run their office, they went with MA's....medical assistants.....an 8 week certificate employee. Basically slightly more ed-u-ma-kated then a burger flipper.

Anonymous said...

Agreed. The medical community as a whole is terrible. Especially the administrative side. Maybe it's because of insurance and medicare and corporate ownership of medical practices making it impossible to pay Medical administrative personnel enough to attract competent people, but every doctor's office I've worked with in the past could of decades, the admin staff has been completely incompetent and completely uncaring as to the fact that their incompetence is seriously impacting their patients' well-being.

I used to have a wonderful doctor that I respected and trusted. It took me a while to find him, but once I did, he was my doc for over 20 years; but he sadly passed away a couple of years ago (he was in his '80's and always said he'd keep seeing patients until they planted him...mission accomplished).

Since then, I've been through a progression of arrogant, uncaring, egotistical assholes who won't listen to me, won't believe me when I tell them what my own body is saying and I wouldn't trust to provide care for my pet snake...on top of the reliably incompetent and rude office staff.

My company changed our insurance carrier this year. Oh.My.God. How many freaking times do I need to inform you and provide you (another) copy of my insurance card before you'll stop trying to bill an insurance company that I don't have any more and start billing the one that I actually have coverage with? I'd think that's one aspect of your business you'd be diligent about since, after all, THAT'S HOW YOU GET PAID.

Anyway, I'm still trying to find a decent Primary Care doctor. Maybe I'll even succeed sometime before I die of old age. Doubtful, but miracles happen.

Note: I actually did find one doctor who I really liked, listened to my concerns and addressed them thoroughly. He's one of the doctors at the VA. I'd love to have him as my PCM, but at the VA, you are assigned to a team and you never know which doctor of that team you're going to see, when you can get an appointment within, say, six months. If you're lucky.

Country Boy said...

I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that there are no doctors left. There are drug company shills ( https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/more-money-more-prescriptions https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/ https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/ ), there are corporate doctors that are simply employees at a conglomeration of special interest offices under a single roof ("We need to book you into a few of our special clinics"), there are simple offices where they run as many people (hard to call them patients when there's minimal care being given) through as possible just for the copay and insurance, and there are offices that pad the bill to insurance and Medicare with dozens of unnecessary tests. I walked out of my doctor's office when they refused to honor the appointment because I checked "No" to the "Are you vaccinated" box on the check in form. Suddenly I needed to jump through lots of hoops before I would be allowed refills of my meds.

Anonymous said...

I have a good one for you. I have an annual fee i pay for maintaining something work related. Only 16 per year.

They sent me an email saying payment didnt go through because my credit card they have on file expired. I go to log in and they no have 2 part authentication. So after logging in its supposed to send a text to your phone on record and send you a code.. except the # on record is a land line. So i go to the contact us page to fill out tge form. One of the options is that you are contacting because 2 part login isnt allowing you to log in. I hit send and before it sends it you have to log in......

Back to original email and at very bottom it has a support@ email address you can respond to if you are having issues. So i fire off an email and it is returned saying that unless i put my ticket number into the subject line it will not accept the message. So no way to get a ticket since i cant log in....

I want to beat the IT idiot who set this cluster up... what kind of a moron has a system like this.

Exile1981

Anonymous said...

Thank ObamaCare. No, seriously. A lot of the small doctors offices in my little town are now controlled by some giant medical establishment 150 miles away. If you want to schedule an appointment, you have to call the big city versus the doctors office. Why? The small medical practices couldn't afford the computer equipment and software required by ObamaCare. It was either close shop or merge with a conglomerate.

The entire notion that the Democratic party is for the little guy is pure bullshit.

Anonymous said...

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