Do Your Job - Guest Post - Part 2
Picked up from where Part 1 left off…
My most recent experience of repeating my mantra was with my HMO. My doctor had scheduled a CT scan. Okay fine, I can handle that. She told me I didn’t need a contrast prescription. Okay fine. I’ve been putting up with this pain because the surgeon they sent me to a couple of years ago poked me in the gut, told me I didn’t need surgery and the only reason I noticed it…was because I was in PAIN! (I SO wanted to ask him how many years of medical school it took him to come up with THAT brilliant piece of wisdom…but I didn’t.)
My cell phone rang, and it was Teddy, or Harold, or Paul, or William…whatever…from CT Scan. He proceeded to schedule my appointment. I have to drive to 25 miles, drink some contrast. “Whoa! Whoa! Hold the phone! That’s not what I was told. What are you talking about?” He continued on while I sat in my car on the side of the road, finger in one ear and cell phone plastered to the other. When I told him that my doctor had given me different instructions, he asked me who my doctor was. I dutifully told him as I certainly wanted this done CORRECTLY the FIRST time so I wouldn’t have to (hopefully) repeat it. Then, just as I turned my motor off (because I was using up way too much gas trying to help him explain in English what he was trying to tell me in some foreign language) I couldn’t believe what he asked me next. “Do you happen to have a phone number for your doctor?”
WHAT? EXCUSE ME…The doctor works for YOUR HMO…and you want ME to give you the phone number?
DO YOUR JOB!
If I have to help this Health Maintenance Organization employee find a phone number to one of THEIR doctors…then my fears about doctors and hospitals and procedures have surely been confirmed! I ask you, if they can’t find a simple phone number, how are they going to manage something a bit more challenging like doing a CT SCAN?
Perspiration now dripping down my forehead I asked Teddy, or Harold, or William what his name was again. He told me. Then I asked his LAST name…and he said, “CT Scan.”
Your LAST name is CT-Scan? …please tell me you are joking!
They say we get what we tolerate. The older I get, the less I tolerate. And the older I get, the more I speak out against injustice and things that just aren’t right like people who don’t DO THEIR JOB! Maybe that’s a good thing…maybe not. Maybe it’s time we all stopped tolerating poor service and insist that employees and government agencies, HMOS, and Legislators and yes…Presidents…actually DO THEIR JOB! Now wouldn’t that be something!
All I can say at this point, is when I’m shaking as I drive out to meet little William CT-Scan, I hope my registration from the DMV is actually valid. And I sure hope that I don’t have to pick up my prescriptions from Jessica after I bail out of my HMO. Someone please tell me she has toddled off to get a mani-pedi and she is no longer employed at that not so friendly pharmacy! Surely she wouldn’t hesitate to tell me to move out of the way because I won’t be in line with the walker. Nope! I’ll be the grump pounding my cane on the counter hissing the mantra “Sssssweeeeeeeetie…DO YOUR JOB!”
Related posts:
