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What, you thought I put the "part I" on the last post just for shits and giggles?
There's a part III, too. Later.
Well, I guess this one doesn't have too much to do with doctors, but there was certainly more than one hospital staff at fault here. I don't remember the exact details to this incident, so bear with me...
This one happened probably around 2 years ago, not too long after I'd moved to Texas. Since I'd just recently moved, I didn't have a primary care provider yet. I had been having some problems with UTIs (urinary tract infections) so I finally went to one of the local walk-in clinics to get some antibiotics.
The doctor on staff didn't really impress me. My husband had come with me and I asked him to come into the exam room with me after I'd given a urine sample, to wait for the doctor. When the doctor showed up, she took one step into the room, stopped short, glanced at the file she was holding (pressumably with my information?) and said, "Who's the patient here?" Note that my husband has an obvious masculine name, and I have an obvious feminine name.
So after she figured out who she was seeing (me) and why (UTIs) she started asking me questions. One of her questions was what kind of symptoms I was experiencing. I rattled them off: urgency to go, burning sensation while going, blood in the urine. She typed something, then said, "Do you feel any discomfort or burning when you urinate?" "Yes..." "Okay, and have you seen blood in your urine?" "...yes..."
Anyway, I've never seen her again and she really isn't the focus of this topic. I got some antibiotics and the urgent care doctor said I should follow up with my PCP, especially if the UTIs continue. Well, I didn't have a PCP so I just sort of ignored that order for the time being.
I took my antibiotics and everything was fine for a couple of months, then I got another UTI. I decided to try and make a regular appointment with a doctor this time, instead of going to urgent care. Since I didn't know anyone, I basically just called up the same clinic (they are a very large clinic with many different "departments", including urgent care) and asked for an appointment ASAP. They got me in pretty quickly and I met Dr. G.
Dr. G got me on another round of antibiotics and after telling her a brief history of my UTIs, she said I should see a urologist (I think) since I was having more UTIs than was normal (I think by that point I'd had 3 in a 12 month span.) She said she would write a referral to have some kind of a procedure done first -- I don't remember the name of it, but basically, they were going to have me drink (or maybe inject me) with some kind of dye, and then take an x-ray or MRI so they could see my bladder/urethra/all that stuff and make sure there wasn't anything physically wrong with the plumbing, so to speak. Dr. G said that this was necessary before any urologist would see me.
So, she gives me the referral and sends me upstairs to the urology department. I head up there and give the receptionist my referral and she says that the procedure in question is actually done at the hospital, not the clinic, but that they can set up the appointment for me right now. Well, I had to wait about half an hour for one of their representatives to become available. The rep called the hospital's urology department and told them what I needed to have done. They set up an appointment for me and gave the rep on my end some brief instructions to pass on to me: No eating or drinking any time after midnight the night before the appointment, and to show up an hour or so early so they could prep me for it.
Okay. Easy enough. I didn't think anything of it until a day or two before the appointment in question, when I got a call from the hospital's billing department, wanting my insurance information. They wanted to make sure that my insurance would cover this particular procedure, and if they wouldn't, they wanted to make sure I would be able to pay for the whole thing upfront (which wouldn't be cheap, it was several hundred dollars.) Thankfully, my insurance did cover it.
After talking to the billing department, it occurred to me that I hadn't gotten any info from the hospital regarding additional instructions for the procedure, or even an appointment reminder. So I called the hospital's urology department (this was the day before the appointment in question) and spoke to a very abrupt, rude woman. I told her my name and that I had an appointment with them the next day for <insert name of procedure here> and that I was wondering if there was anything I needed to do besides fast after midnight.
Rude Woman: Did you read the information packet and fill out all the sheets it came with?
Me: Information packet? I don't have an information packet--
Rude Woman: Well, you'll have to come down here and get one, then.
Me: Er, can I fill it out in the morning? Or can you maybe email it to me? It's just--
Rude Woman: No, you need to come down here in person and pick it up tonight.
This put us in kind of a bind, because we only had one vehicle, and my husband was at work (with said vehicle.) He left work a little early so that we'd have time to get to the hospital early enough to get this information packet.
So, we get there. We had to pay for parking (is this normal? I've never had to pay for hospital parking before I moved to San Antonio.) We go in, find urology, talk to a nice receptionist (NR).
NR: Can I help you?
Me: Yeah, hi, I have an appointment for <procedure> tomorrow and I was told I needed to come get some information about it.
NR: (gets a puzzled look on her face) Tomorrow? (opens a file) What was your name again?
Me: (tells her my name)
NR: And you said it was for tomorrow? Are you sure?
Me: Yeah, I have an appoinment card here, see. (show her the card I had gotten at the clinic when I first made the appointment)
NR: Have you been fasting since this morning?
Me: Uh...no...
NR: And did you take <some kind of medication>?
Me: No, I wasn't told I needed...
NR: (sounding really confused and kind of upset) Well, for <procedure> you need to fast for 24 hours before your appointent, and you need to take <medication> by 4pm the evening before. (the medication was some kind of diuretic to clear out the system, and by this time it was after 6pm.)
Me: (stares at her, speechless)
NR: I'm really sorry...I don't even have you down as having an appointment tomorrow, otherwise I would have called you two days ago to tell you this. I call all of the patients who are having <procedure> done to make sure they filled out the information packet, and that they're prepared to fast. And you said you don't have the information packet, either?
Me: No. When I made the appointment, I was just told I needed to fast after midnight the night before, and show up an hour early. That's it. They didn't say anything about fasting for 24 hours, or an information packet.
NR: Who made this appointment for you?
Me: Someone at the <clinic name> Clinic, I was referred by Dr. G and made the appointment in the urology department of the clinic.
NR: They should have given you the information packet right then and there, they have it on file at the clinic.
Me: ...
NR: I'm sorry, there's nothing I can really do at this point. You're going to have to reschedule the appointment.
Me: Right...
I left, and never went back to that hospital. Pffft, you think after a screw-up of that proportion that I'm going to let them stick dye inside me? No thanks.
The part that really got me was that the urology department had absolutely no record of my appointment, but their billing department knew all about it. Way to have your priorities straight, health care.
For the record, I take a supplement now called D'Mannose. It's a natural supplement that contains the same stuff that's in cranberry juice, that's good for clearing out the urinary tract, but it's something like 100 times more concentrated. It helps flush out the infection while leaving the good bacteria behind (regular antibiotics kill everything, good bacteria included.) I take 1 tablet a day, and if I feel a UTI coming on, I can take more, up to 2 tablets every 4 hours. I've never had a serious UTI since I started taking it.
There's a part III, too. Later.
Well, I guess this one doesn't have too much to do with doctors, but there was certainly more than one hospital staff at fault here. I don't remember the exact details to this incident, so bear with me...
This one happened probably around 2 years ago, not too long after I'd moved to Texas. Since I'd just recently moved, I didn't have a primary care provider yet. I had been having some problems with UTIs (urinary tract infections) so I finally went to one of the local walk-in clinics to get some antibiotics.
The doctor on staff didn't really impress me. My husband had come with me and I asked him to come into the exam room with me after I'd given a urine sample, to wait for the doctor. When the doctor showed up, she took one step into the room, stopped short, glanced at the file she was holding (pressumably with my information?) and said, "Who's the patient here?" Note that my husband has an obvious masculine name, and I have an obvious feminine name.
So after she figured out who she was seeing (me) and why (UTIs) she started asking me questions. One of her questions was what kind of symptoms I was experiencing. I rattled them off: urgency to go, burning sensation while going, blood in the urine. She typed something, then said, "Do you feel any discomfort or burning when you urinate?" "Yes..." "Okay, and have you seen blood in your urine?" "...yes..."
Anyway, I've never seen her again and she really isn't the focus of this topic. I got some antibiotics and the urgent care doctor said I should follow up with my PCP, especially if the UTIs continue. Well, I didn't have a PCP so I just sort of ignored that order for the time being.
I took my antibiotics and everything was fine for a couple of months, then I got another UTI. I decided to try and make a regular appointment with a doctor this time, instead of going to urgent care. Since I didn't know anyone, I basically just called up the same clinic (they are a very large clinic with many different "departments", including urgent care) and asked for an appointment ASAP. They got me in pretty quickly and I met Dr. G.
Dr. G got me on another round of antibiotics and after telling her a brief history of my UTIs, she said I should see a urologist (I think) since I was having more UTIs than was normal (I think by that point I'd had 3 in a 12 month span.) She said she would write a referral to have some kind of a procedure done first -- I don't remember the name of it, but basically, they were going to have me drink (or maybe inject me) with some kind of dye, and then take an x-ray or MRI so they could see my bladder/urethra/all that stuff and make sure there wasn't anything physically wrong with the plumbing, so to speak. Dr. G said that this was necessary before any urologist would see me.
So, she gives me the referral and sends me upstairs to the urology department. I head up there and give the receptionist my referral and she says that the procedure in question is actually done at the hospital, not the clinic, but that they can set up the appointment for me right now. Well, I had to wait about half an hour for one of their representatives to become available. The rep called the hospital's urology department and told them what I needed to have done. They set up an appointment for me and gave the rep on my end some brief instructions to pass on to me: No eating or drinking any time after midnight the night before the appointment, and to show up an hour or so early so they could prep me for it.
Okay. Easy enough. I didn't think anything of it until a day or two before the appointment in question, when I got a call from the hospital's billing department, wanting my insurance information. They wanted to make sure that my insurance would cover this particular procedure, and if they wouldn't, they wanted to make sure I would be able to pay for the whole thing upfront (which wouldn't be cheap, it was several hundred dollars.) Thankfully, my insurance did cover it.
After talking to the billing department, it occurred to me that I hadn't gotten any info from the hospital regarding additional instructions for the procedure, or even an appointment reminder. So I called the hospital's urology department (this was the day before the appointment in question) and spoke to a very abrupt, rude woman. I told her my name and that I had an appointment with them the next day for <insert name of procedure here> and that I was wondering if there was anything I needed to do besides fast after midnight.
Rude Woman: Did you read the information packet and fill out all the sheets it came with?
Me: Information packet? I don't have an information packet--
Rude Woman: Well, you'll have to come down here and get one, then.
Me: Er, can I fill it out in the morning? Or can you maybe email it to me? It's just--
Rude Woman: No, you need to come down here in person and pick it up tonight.
This put us in kind of a bind, because we only had one vehicle, and my husband was at work (with said vehicle.) He left work a little early so that we'd have time to get to the hospital early enough to get this information packet.
So, we get there. We had to pay for parking (is this normal? I've never had to pay for hospital parking before I moved to San Antonio.) We go in, find urology, talk to a nice receptionist (NR).
NR: Can I help you?
Me: Yeah, hi, I have an appointment for <procedure> tomorrow and I was told I needed to come get some information about it.
NR: (gets a puzzled look on her face) Tomorrow? (opens a file) What was your name again?
Me: (tells her my name)
NR: And you said it was for tomorrow? Are you sure?
Me: Yeah, I have an appoinment card here, see. (show her the card I had gotten at the clinic when I first made the appointment)
NR: Have you been fasting since this morning?
Me: Uh...no...
NR: And did you take <some kind of medication>?
Me: No, I wasn't told I needed...
NR: (sounding really confused and kind of upset) Well, for <procedure> you need to fast for 24 hours before your appointent, and you need to take <medication> by 4pm the evening before. (the medication was some kind of diuretic to clear out the system, and by this time it was after 6pm.)
Me: (stares at her, speechless)
NR: I'm really sorry...I don't even have you down as having an appointment tomorrow, otherwise I would have called you two days ago to tell you this. I call all of the patients who are having <procedure> done to make sure they filled out the information packet, and that they're prepared to fast. And you said you don't have the information packet, either?
Me: No. When I made the appointment, I was just told I needed to fast after midnight the night before, and show up an hour early. That's it. They didn't say anything about fasting for 24 hours, or an information packet.
NR: Who made this appointment for you?
Me: Someone at the <clinic name> Clinic, I was referred by Dr. G and made the appointment in the urology department of the clinic.
NR: They should have given you the information packet right then and there, they have it on file at the clinic.
Me: ...
NR: I'm sorry, there's nothing I can really do at this point. You're going to have to reschedule the appointment.
Me: Right...
I left, and never went back to that hospital. Pffft, you think after a screw-up of that proportion that I'm going to let them stick dye inside me? No thanks.
The part that really got me was that the urology department had absolutely no record of my appointment, but their billing department knew all about it. Way to have your priorities straight, health care.
For the record, I take a supplement now called D'Mannose. It's a natural supplement that contains the same stuff that's in cranberry juice, that's good for clearing out the urinary tract, but it's something like 100 times more concentrated. It helps flush out the infection while leaving the good bacteria behind (regular antibiotics kill everything, good bacteria included.) I take 1 tablet a day, and if I feel a UTI coming on, I can take more, up to 2 tablets every 4 hours. I've never had a serious UTI since I started taking it.
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