Diary of a Wolfeman

I recently went to the Doctor’s office for a specific checkup. It took about 4 hours total, and I spent about one hour of that time cooling my heels waiting either for the doctor or a lab technician. After I saw the Doc, he said he would call in a scrip to my pharmacy. Later that day, no word from the Doc to the pharmacy.

I tried to call back the next day, and fought my way through their phone system for a full five minutes to eventually get stuck leaving a voicemail. They never called me back, nor did they call the pharmacy.

I let it sit a couple days while I waited for them, and eventually decided to give Tolerant a break from nagging me and tried to call them back – and all of their published phone numbers rang through to the fax machine. 5 different times.

Waited another couple days, called back on three different occasions. The first two saw me fighting through their phone system only to get voicemail again, but the third time I called I finally managed to get a human, who said she would make sure the scrip got called in. When I went to pick up said scrip, it turned out to be for an over-the-counter medicine and some special instructions that he fucking well could have handed me in person and just told me what to buy.

In total, the bill came up as $131 in labs and $217 for the visit. The insurance company will only allow them to charge a certain amount, so I then received a bill for the difference. Add all of that up and divide by the three hours, and you get a number a bit less than what my company charges for an hour of my time. Here’s the difference:

If I keep you waiting while I do something for somebody else, I don’t bill you for the time.

If I tell you that you need a part or some software, I will tell you what it is, why you need it, and why you should get this particular brand. I will then sell it to you. If I can’t sell it to you, I will provide you with explicit instructions on where to get it as well.

If for some reason you need to call my office, you will be told by the prompter to press a number for each department, at which point a human will answer the phone. You will not be forced to go through a minimum of 5 minutes of recorded messages before a human might pick up.

My phone system will never put you through to the fax machine.

My clients will call me the next time they have a problem. I won’t be calling my doctor again, I will be going somewhere else.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.