I came home Wednesday night to find a message on the answering machine. This is somewhat unusual, as most of the people who call us are trying to get us to donate money to some cause or another, and they don't leave messages. I hit play:
Hi, this is [Name] from [Gastroenterology Practice]. This message is for Chad, I'm calling to confirm your appointment for a procedure at [Hospital] on May 7th.
This was somewhat alarming, because I had no recollection of scheduling any sort of procedure at [Hospital], let alone one for Monday...
I called them yesterday afternoon, and left a message. A couple hours later, just as I was starting to get annoyed that they were blowing me off, I got a call from a secretary there.
"OK," she said, "I think we've figured out what happened..."
It seems that the last time I had an appointment with them, which was sometime in December, either the person who had the appointment immediately before mine, or the person who had the appointment immediately after mine needed to have a procedure scheduled for May, and it got put in the wrong file.
They were still trying to figure out who was actually supposed to be having a procedure on Monday (I'm not sure what sort of procedure it was-- they didn't say in the message-- but none of the options are good), but they were quite confident that it wasn't me. So, at least my memory isn't failing...
But, boy, this doesn't do wonders for my confidence in the care that I'm getting. I sure hope they found the person who's due to have something done on Monday-- they've got even more to worry about than I do.
- Log in to post comments
Gastroenterology's nasty little secret is that belly fat compresses stomachs thereby eliciting esophogeal intrusion of gastric contents. It is not pathology, it is engineering. As America gets fatter so do endoscopy revenues.
The US has the best available, but it's not available to almost all of us. If you were the POTUS, a Senator, even a lowly judge, or a Saudi prince, it would be available.
This is what the noise about US health care is about. It's there, we just can't get it.
What's the deal with Uncle Al? Every time I see him in the comments, he's in the #1 spot and just strings together a bunch of words that sound meaningful but aren't, and form some kind of vague conspiracy theory. I've clicked his link a couple of times (the second time having forgotten about the first) and he seems like a class A wing-nut, I'm just not sure what kind. Does anyone who's been around longer have any idea what his deal is?
At least you didn't get the wrong foot amputated.
Oh yes. He used to hang out a lot on the sci. newsgroups, back when Usenet was the predominant geeky timewaster on the Internet. He knows a great deal about some areas of chemistry, so the folks at sci.chem tended to put up with his more bizarre moments, since he would sometimes have something intelligent to say on that topic. However, even back then, his penchant for simultaneously irrelevant and obnoxious rhetoric was well known. If anything, it's gotten worse over time.
I've rec'd phone messages like that one, too. Even more gruesome, are the messages you get when the caller hasn't even listened to the outgoing message. So they, for darned sure, aren't sure they've reached the party they've intended to call. You can hear waaay more than you ever wanted. Probably a HIPPA violation to boot.
Excuse me, but can we have your liver?
Heh. A friend of mine in high school had an unfortunately common name, as did his father, which led to some medical care issues. When my friend's dad was in the hospital for an infection, the first screw-up came when they woke him up at 5:30 AM to shave his chest for his bypass surgery (he wasn't having one). Then there was the time (same week) that they called his wife to tell her he was on the roof threatening to jump (not him, nor the guy getting the bypass). That does not, to say the least, inspire faith in their competence in other areas.
Thought for a second you had visited Sweden without telling anyone... Oh well, relurking