May 4th, 2011 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Humor, True Stories
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9:00 pm:
Hello. It’s Mrs. Mumbledimumbler; I need the doctor to call me right away. My hip is driving me crazy. Please call me.
I listen to the message three times so I can sort of make out the name. The problem is that even though I think I can understand it, I don’t recognize it at all. But I call her because she said she needed me to call her right away.
Hello. I need you to call me in some tramadol right away.
“What was your name again?”
She repeats it clearly enough for me to confirm that I really don’t recognize it.
“Have I ever seen you in the office?”
No.
Let me get this straight: it’s 9:00 at night and your hip is hurting, so you call a doctor who’s a complete stranger and insist that they call you in a powerful painkiller without ever having seen you, taken your medical history, or examined you? I don’t think so.
“Um, I’m sorry ma’am, but I really can’t do that unless you’re an established patient in my office.”
Oh, okay; never mind.
I suppose I should count my lucky stars that she didn’t want vicodin.
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
May 12th, 2010 by AlanDappenMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Primary Care Wednesdays, True Stories
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A common problem in healthcare is the number of times that small adjustments are needed in a person’s care. Often for these little changes, a physical exam and face-to-face time have nothing to do with good medical decision making.
Yet the patient and doctor are locked in a legacy-industrialized business model that requires the patient to pay a co-pay and waste at least half of their day driving to and from the office, logging time in a waiting room, and then visiting five minutes with their practitioner for the needed medical information or advice.
Today I’d like to visit the case of a patient I’ll call “DD,” who I easily diagnosed with temporal arteritis (TA) through a 15-minute phone call after she’d spent four weeks as the healthcare system fumbled her time with delays and misdirection via several doctors without establishing a firm diagnosis. Read more »
March 3rd, 2010 by Happy Hospitalist in Better Health Network, News, Opinion
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It turns out calling 911 isn’t free. Imagine that. 911 communications may actually cost you money. People who pay taxes aren’t the only ones who are fitting the bill anymore. In some places ambulances are charging fat surcharges for the extra equipment necessary for the ambulance ride? How much does an ambulance ride cost if you are morbidly obese? How does an extra $500 in addition to the base rate.
But even people who don’t require extra equipment will have to start paying extra for the right to make the call to 911 communications. How much extra? How much will calling 911 cost in Tracy, California? Well, if you want to pay a $48 per year fee, you can call 911 communications centers as many times as you want. But if you don’t want to pay the fee, how does $300 per call sound. If you’re having a stroke, calling 911 communications may just cost you your arm and your leg.
That’s right. $300 to call 911 communications for an emergency. Or perhaps the problem is too many people are calling for nonemergency reasons. If you can’t get the frequent abusers who show up at the hospital by ambulance for nonemergent problems to stop calling 911, maybe you can collect their $300 by garnishing their welfare and disability checks.
At some point, our country is going to have to stop excusing the actions of the economic tax abusers and start implementing personal responsibility with real consequences that hold folks accountable for their actions. I think charging a fee is an excellent deterant to unnecssary abuse of a system that is overwhelmed with nonurgent convenience care.
*This blog post was originally published at Happy Hospitalist*
January 13th, 2010 by Davis Liu, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, True Stories
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I’ve always wanted to be a doctor.
Never a writer.
With a new year and a new decade, I am determined to become a better writer not because of some childhood dream or expectation from others, but because of a near mishap that occurred at the beginning of 2000. A simple phone call changed the destiny of my brother from having a good outcome to having a great outcome. A simple phone call may have been the difference between “you are cancer free” to “I’m sorry to tell you it’s come back.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
