After my Wonder Woman’s recent adventures in things medical, where every person asked the same questions over and over, in order to fill out yet another form (when multiple times the same questions had been asked, answered and entered into electronic databases), I am thinking of having a “medalert tag” made that says something on the order of,
“No known allergies to any medications. Severely allergic to being asked the same questions over and over. Will charge $100 for each time the same question is asked when it has been previously answered.”
I understand the “cover your ass” aspect of our current med system, brought on by stupid legal practices that are counterproductive for everyone but lawyers, and by (mostly) “feddle gummint bureaucrappic” interference in medical services, but really? Assholes asking the same question that has been asked by someone else and answered IN THEIR PRESENCE?
OK, maybe I can abate my charges a bit and only charge $50 for every 15 minutes of bullshit. *heh*
Oh yeah. Just had 69yo hubby in hosp for 12 days with a low sodium issue, then a little minor surgery. The fun part is that he is very high functioning autistic, so has the typical sensory issues and information processing issues that had nothing to do with the mental fog of low sodium. I think that the constantly changing array of caregivers impacts quality of care. It was great when we had the same nurses or aides for more than one day. I got them to put signs on his door about the noise levels and his tendency to hunt for words, and for them to just wait on him a minute. It was so frustrating explaining him to 500 different people. I didn’t want them labeling him with something he didn’t have. He is home now and back to his normal state of weirdness 🙂 Middle daughter has chronic migraine and is a “frequent flyer” at the ER. They have finally caught on to her treatment protocol and we are in and out now in 30 minutes instead of 2 hours. Pull up her name, do what she needs, she’ll let them know if anything is different. You have my sympathies 🙂 CAT
Glad things are better for your husband.
Let’s see. . . my Wonder Woman’s ER visit was ~$4,500+ (insurance caught most of it), partially because of the six different doctors I counted? *heh* Six different doctors and at least as many different nurses, plus X-Ray techs and lab techs and . . . each and every one asked the same questions and got the same answers, all of which were re-entered into their devices, and into (apparently) different parts of the system that seemed to not talk with each other.
All a part of “bureacrappic” CYA procedures, I assume. All probably required by some government regulation or legal eagle specification to keep liability down.
Fortunately for her, my Wonder Woman’s broken arm (large displacement of fracture of the radius and no displacement of ulnar fractures–yes, plural) was her left arm and she’s right handed, because her signature was required on all but one form that had the SAME INFO AS ALL THE OTHER FORMS she signed. (That one was after she had had a mild anesthesia administered for the reduction of the radial fracture; in that one case, they allowed me to sign our firstborn male child away.)
Who knows what the surgery will be billed as. . . Luckily, the ER visit ate up her deductible. Unfortunately, it was another round of answering the same questions–the same ones that already had answers entered into the system (same hospital, same osteo surgeon as consulted w/ER and with whom she had already had one separate consult).