Crappy #$#%#% people @ the Doctor's office

Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again. So no
sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to be there
at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday afternoon 24
hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I forgot to call the tech
so he won't be here tonight. He can be here Friday I said no Monday thru
Wednesday nights only the rest of the time I am on call that says it in my
file.

We can schedule you to go down there tomorrow she tells me. Their office is
in Fort Lauderdale a 4 hour trip each way with perfect traffic. I said ok
when can I come buy and pick up the money for the gas. No answer she says
well we can get you in next Monday. So now I got to wait another week again

I love my doctor to death but he hires idiots. If they ain't losing blood
work and paper work. They conveniently forget to do things or have the
wrong file out when you go into see the doctor

"Matthew" wrote in
ng.com:

Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again. So
no sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to be
there at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday
afternoon 24 hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I
forgot to call the tech so he won't be here tonight. He can be here
Friday I said no Monday thru Wednesday nights only the rest of the
time I am on call that says it in my file.

We can schedule you to go down there tomorrow she tells me. Their
office is in Fort Lauderdale a 4 hour trip each way with perfect
traffic. I said ok when can I come buy and pick up the money for the
gas. No answer she says well we can get you in next Monday. So now
I got to wait another week again

I love my doctor to death but he hires idiots. If they ain't losing
blood work and paper work. They conveniently forget to do things or
have the wrong file out when you go into see the doctor





Well if it is like my doctor's office there is a large variation in how
much each of them cares about what they are doing. It's very tiresome.

"Matthew" wrote in message
ng.com...
Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again. So no
sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to be
there at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday
afternoon 24 hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I forgot
to call the tech so he won't be here tonight. He can be here Friday I
said no Monday thru Wednesday nights only the rest of the time I am on
call that says it in my file.

We can schedule you to go down there tomorrow she tells me. Their office
is in Fort Lauderdale a 4 hour trip each way with perfect traffic. I said
ok when can I come buy and pick up the money for the gas. No answer she
says well we can get you in next Monday. So now I got to wait another
week again

I love my doctor to death but he hires idiots. If they ain't losing blood
work and paper work. They conveniently forget to do things or have the
wrong file out when you go into see the doctor


Complain Matthew. Complain loudly. With all the people hunting for work,
there shouldn't be a problem getting competent people to do the work.

Pam S.

"Matthew" wrote in message
ng.com...
Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again.
So no sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to
be there at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday
afternoon 24 hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I
forgot to call the tech so he won't be here tonight. He can be here
Friday I said no Monday thru Wednesday nights only the rest of the
time I am on call that says it in my file.

We can schedule you to go down there tomorrow she tells me. Their
office is in Fort Lauderdale a 4 hour trip each way with perfect
traffic. I said ok when can I come buy and pick up the money for
the gas. No answer she says well we can get you in next Monday.
So now I got to wait another week again

I love my doctor to death but he hires idiots. If they ain't losing
blood work and paper work. They conveniently forget to do things or
have the wrong file out when you go into see the doctor


I hear you.

Right now I'm waiting for a call back from my Dr's office. Trying to
find out why the prescription request that needs to be faxed to my
mail order pharmacy that I hand carried to them a week ago was never
sent, and the other RX request that was called in by my pharmacy last
week was never acknowledged.

They are scrambling to find the information because I told them I want
an appointment to see the doctor so I can get those three
prescriptions handled, and he is going to be totally ****ed when he
finds me in there for an office visit just for paperwork they didn't
do. They do not like days when the doctor is ****ed.

Jo

Matthew wrote:

Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again. So no
sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to be there
at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday afternoon 24
hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I forgot to call the tech
so he won't be here tonight.

Wow, that's some major incompetence. Although I'm stunned that she admitted
honestly that it was her fault!

I had a sleep study a few weeks ago. At my HMO, they attach all the
equipment to your body on the evening of the test, and then send you
home to sleep. They explained that they started doing it this way
because "people sleep better in their own beds". My foot! They do it
that way because it's cheaper, and for no other reason.

Anyway, the procedure is that you sleep with the stuff on you for one
night, and then take it off in the morning and bring it back to them. The
equipment measures changes in the position of your chest and diaphragm,
to see if you stop breathing, and your blood oxygenation via a clip on
your finger.

So I bring it all back the next day, and within a couple of hours I get a
call saying, "The equipment apparently failed, and we were unable to get
any data at all." I do remember that the oxygen clip on my finger had a
glowing red light when I first put it on, but as I got into bed, I noticed
it had gone out. This concerned me, but at that point it was after midnight,
so there was nothing I could do about it. Whereas, if I had been having
the sleep study *in their lab*, they would have found this problem
immediately and corrected it! The HMO wanted me to reschedule the sleep
study, but since I was leaving them and joining a PPO on August 1, I
dropped the issue.

(PPO = "Preferred Provider..." something... Option?" Anyway it's a type
of insurance plan where you get to choose your own doctors. If you
choose someone within their preferred provider list, you get excellent
coverage. But you can also choose someone "out of network" (ie, not on
their list), and you can get some coverage for that, too, something like
50% of the bill. So it can cost you more, if you prefer a doctor who
happens not to be in their network, but at least you have the option of
doing so. With an HMO, you are only allowed to see doctors in their
organization. And you're getting health care from people whose salaries
are paid by the very organization that's paying for your visit! Conflict
of interest anyone?)

I now have to find a general practitioner in my new health plan, who I
will ask to recommend a sleep study for me. There's a very good sleep lab
at Stanford University, where I had my 1998 sleep study. I'm hoping I can
go there again.

We can schedule you to go down there tomorrow she tells me. Their office is
in Fort Lauderdale a 4 hour trip each way with perfect traffic. I said ok
when can I come buy and pick up the money for the gas. No answer

LOL, good one.

I love my doctor to death but he hires idiots. If they ain't losing blood
work and paper work. They conveniently forget to do things or have the
wrong file out when you go into see the doctor

This was bad, but I think the worst story of staff incompetence I've heard,
at least on this ng, had to be when Christina W. was suffering from a major
hernia, and the staff people had her running up and down several flights of
stairs because nobody seemed to know where her appointment was supposed
to be!

--
Joyce ^..^

(To email me, remove the X's from my user name.)

Oh Matt, this is horrible. I would go Fridy and confirm it all again.
Damn...nothing more just Damn.
"Matthew" wrote in message
ng.com...
Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again. So no
sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to be
there at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday
afternoon 24 hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I forgot
to call the tech so he won't be here tonight. He can be here Friday I
said no Monday thru Wednesday nights only the rest of the time I am on
call that says it in my file.

We can schedule you to go down there tomorrow she tells me. Their office
is in Fort Lauderdale a 4 hour trip each way with perfect traffic. I said
ok when can I come buy and pick up the money for the gas. No answer she
says well we can get you in next Monday. So now I got to wait another
week again

I love my doctor to death but he hires idiots. If they ain't losing blood
work and paper work. They conveniently forget to do things or have the
wrong file out when you go into see the doctor

wrote in message

Matthew wrote:

Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again.
So no sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to
be there at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday
afternoon 24 hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I
forgot to call the tech so he won't be here tonight.

Wow, that's some major incompetence. Although I'm stunned that she
admitted honestly that it was her fault!

The paediatrician assigned to Cary when he was born [1] was also a sleep
specailist. When we went to see him for Cary's six week check-up, he said he
suspected Cary had sleep apnoea and had to go for a sleep study. So in we
went to the hospital, he got al hooked up, and when the results came back,
lo and behold apprantly yes, Cary had sleep apnoea. Although the
paeditrican/sleep specialist got really strange when I wanted to look at hte
results myself. He moved them out of my sisght and said something along the
lines of "you aren't a doctor, you wouldn't understand". We paid out the
$300 co-payment, bought the breathing alarm ($100 co-payment), moved Cary
back into my room (as the alarm was going off all the time) and no-one got
any sleep.

After several more trips to this specialist, all paying out $80 co-payment
to see him each time, Cary had to go to another sleep study. We turned up at
the hospital at 6pm, I was annoyed to discover I didn't get a bed (I was
still breast feeding), and we waited. And waited. And waited. No-one showed.

At 11:30pm, with Cary still awake (he had to be *kept* awake for the start
of the test), I thought 'stuff this' and went home.

I got a phone call the next morning with no apology, just a demand to
reschedule. And in two days I got a bill for a sleep study. I called my
health insurer and told them not to pay - I explained what had happened and
said could you please deal with it (they were an employee health insurance
service, and knew me pretty well by then). Thankfully they did.

As it just so happens the day after the non-event I was down at the local
pharmarcy on the day the area health nurse does the baby check-ups. I got
Cary weighed, measured and checked and she asked me what this alarm thingy
that was attached ot him was for. I said 'sleep apnoea'. She said "You're
kidding, right?". And went on to explain that kids with sleep apnoea do not
thrive. They are sickly looking, don't have any energy, always looking tired
and pale, don't tend to put on weight or grow very well. And here's Cary, my
pink cheeked giant, with a healthy layer of baby fat and wiggling and
gurgling all over the place. She said "there is *no way* that child has
sleep apnoea." I asked about him snuffling in his sleep. Apprantly *all*
kids do that, they snuffle, they snort,they make all sorts of noises. If
they stop breathing for more than 30 seconds, and then gasp for air, they
have sleep apnoea, but snuffling is normal.

And thats when I looked up 'sleep apnoea in *children*' and she was right.

I took the alarm back to the place we got it, go a small refund, and never
bothered to take Cary back to that idiot again. I can only suspect that
either a) he was just a greedy git or b) needed some control subjects -
after all, no mother in their right mind would put their baby (and
htemselves by default) through a sleep study just 'for the good of science'.

Yowie
[1] I was at the hospital, about 10 minutes after giving birth, when some
git with a form came in "and who is your paeditrician". "I don't have one,"
I said. "You should have," said he, incredulously. "Why would I have a
paeditrician when up until 10 minute ago I didn't have any children?" "Oh".
I asked my obstrician to recommend one. Then again, I didn't like my obs
that much either.

You should have told the Doctor you were going for a second opinion. Bet it
would have changed things a bit.
"Yowie" wrote in message
...
wrote in message

Matthew wrote:

Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again.
So no sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to
be there at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday
afternoon 24 hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I
forgot to call the tech so he won't be here tonight.

Wow, that's some major incompetence. Although I'm stunned that she
admitted honestly that it was her fault!

The paediatrician assigned to Cary when he was born [1] was also a sleep
specailist. When we went to see him for Cary's six week check-up, he said
he suspected Cary had sleep apnoea and had to go for a sleep study. So in
we went to the hospital, he got al hooked up, and when the results came
back, lo and behold apprantly yes, Cary had sleep apnoea. Although the
paeditrican/sleep specialist got really strange when I wanted to look at
hte results myself. He moved them out of my sisght and said something
along the lines of "you aren't a doctor, you wouldn't understand". We paid
out the $300 co-payment, bought the breathing alarm ($100 co-payment),
moved Cary back into my room (as the alarm was going off all the time) and
no-one got any sleep.

After several more trips to this specialist, all paying out $80 co-payment
to see him each time, Cary had to go to another sleep study. We turned up
at the hospital at 6pm, I was annoyed to discover I didn't get a bed (I
was still breast feeding), and we waited. And waited. And waited. No-one
showed.

At 11:30pm, with Cary still awake (he had to be *kept* awake for the start
of the test), I thought 'stuff this' and went home.

I got a phone call the next morning with no apology, just a demand to
reschedule. And in two days I got a bill for a sleep study. I called my
health insurer and told them not to pay - I explained what had happened
and said could you please deal with it (they were an employee health
insurance service, and knew me pretty well by then). Thankfully they did.

As it just so happens the day after the non-event I was down at the local
pharmarcy on the day the area health nurse does the baby check-ups. I got
Cary weighed, measured and checked and she asked me what this alarm thingy
that was attached ot him was for. I said 'sleep apnoea'. She said "You're
kidding, right?". And went on to explain that kids with sleep apnoea do
not thrive. They are sickly looking, don't have any energy, always looking
tired and pale, don't tend to put on weight or grow very well. And here's
Cary, my pink cheeked giant, with a healthy layer of baby fat and wiggling
and gurgling all over the place. She said "there is *no way* that child
has sleep apnoea." I asked about him snuffling in his sleep. Apprantly
*all* kids do that, they snuffle, they snort,they make all sorts of
noises. If they stop breathing for more than 30 seconds, and then gasp for
air, they have sleep apnoea, but snuffling is normal.

And thats when I looked up 'sleep apnoea in *children*' and she was right.

I took the alarm back to the place we got it, go a small refund, and never
bothered to take Cary back to that idiot again. I can only suspect that
either a) he was just a greedy git or b) needed some control subjects -
after all, no mother in their right mind would put their baby (and
htemselves by default) through a sleep study just 'for the good of
science'.

Yowie
[1] I was at the hospital, about 10 minutes after giving birth, when some
git with a form came in "and who is your paeditrician". "I don't have
one," I said. "You should have," said he, incredulously. "Why would I have
a paeditrician when up until 10 minute ago I didn't have any children?"
"Oh". I asked my obstrician to recommend one. Then again, I didn't like my
obs that much either.

"Matthew" wrote in message
ng.com...
Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again. So no
sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to be
there at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday
afternoon 24 hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I forgot
to call the tech so he won't be here tonight. He can be here Friday I
said no Monday thru Wednesday nights only the rest of the time I am on
call that says it in my file.

We can schedule you to go down there tomorrow she tells me. Their office
is in Fort Lauderdale a 4 hour trip each way with perfect traffic. I said
ok when can I come buy and pick up the money for the gas. No answer she
says well we can get you in next Monday. So now I got to wait another
week again

I love my doctor to death but he hires idiots. If they ain't losing blood
work and paper work. They conveniently forget to do things or have the
wrong file out when you go into see the doctor

Doctors often seem to hire idiots. I suspect the nice ones also hate firing
people, so they keep the idiots on rather than getting rid of them.

Sorry about the delay. That must be so frustrating!

Joy

wrote in message
...
Matthew wrote:

Well yet again the idiots at my doctors office screwed up again. So
no
sleep study tonight

I called to make sure what time to be in there tonight if I had to be
there
at 8:30 or before. Now they confirmed everything yesterday afternoon
24
hours in advance. The girl tells me well ummm I forgot to call the
tech
so he won't be here tonight.

Wow, that's some major incompetence. Although I'm stunned that she
admitted
honestly that it was her fault!

I had a sleep study a few weeks ago. At my HMO, they attach all the
equipment to your body on the evening of the test, and then send you
home to sleep. They explained that they started doing it this way
because "people sleep better in their own beds". My foot! They do it
that way because it's cheaper, and for no other reason.

In your particular situation, you would have been better off at the lab.
However, I'm sure they are right that most people sleep better in their own
beds. I know I do.

Joy

Anyway, the procedure is that you sleep with the stuff on you for one
night, and then take it off in the morning and bring it back to them. The
equipment measures changes in the position of your chest and diaphragm,
to see if you stop breathing, and your blood oxygenation via a clip on
your finger.

So I bring it all back the next day, and within a couple of hours I get a
call saying, "The equipment apparently failed, and we were unable to get
any data at all." I do remember that the oxygen clip on my finger had a
glowing red light when I first put it on, but as I got into bed, I noticed
it had gone out. This concerned me, but at that point it was after
midnight,
so there was nothing I could do about it. Whereas, if I had been having
the sleep study *in their lab*, they would have found this problem
immediately and corrected it! The HMO wanted me to reschedule the sleep
study, but since I was leaving them and joining a PPO on August 1, I
dropped the issue.

(PPO = "Preferred Provider..." something... Option?" Anyway it's a type
of insurance plan where you get to choose your own doctors. If you
choose someone within their preferred provider list, you get excellent
coverage. But you can also choose someone "out of network" (ie, not on
their list), and you can get some coverage for that, too, something like
50% of the bill. So it can cost you more, if you prefer a doctor who
happens not to be in their network, but at least you have the option of
doing so. With an HMO, you are only allowed to see doctors in their
organization. And you're getting health care from people whose salaries
are paid by the very organization that's paying for your visit! Conflict
of interest anyone?)

I now have to find a general practitioner in my new health plan, who I
will ask to recommend a sleep study for me. There's a very good sleep lab
at Stanford University, where I had my 1998 sleep study. I'm hoping I can
go there again.

We can schedule you to go down there tomorrow she tells me. Their
office is
in Fort Lauderdale a 4 hour trip each way with perfect traffic. I said
ok
when can I come buy and pick up the money for the gas. No answer

LOL, good one.

I love my doctor to death but he hires idiots. If they ain't losing
blood
work and paper work. They conveniently forget to do things or have the
wrong file out when you go into see the doctor

This was bad, but I think the worst story of staff incompetence I've
heard,
at least on this ng, had to be when Christina W. was suffering from a
major
hernia, and the staff people had her running up and down several flights
of
stairs because nobody seemed to know where her appointment was supposed
to be!

--
Joyce ^..^

(To email me, remove the X's from my user name.)