This is an email I started to send to my least favorite local hospital (biggest employer, located in downtown, you know the one):
Hello Nurse ____,
Thank you for follow-up email to my visit today to see about my ankle pain. It is very kind of you to write.
My take-away from my visit with Dr. _______ was that I have flat feet, I can try a change in orthotics and hope that stops the bones in my ankle rubbing together, and if that doesn't work, well, too bad. I was not given any options if that doesn't help. If I need to have custom orthotics, it would have been nice to have had some information about that. For example, does that require a prescription?
After my appointment I went to the shoe store as instructed and spent $200 on new shoes and orthotics, which may or may not help. In the meantime, I guess I am to tolerate the pain and keep limping along as I have for the last six months because I'm a 51-year-old overweight woman and therefore completely unimportant.
Dr. ____ probably did not spend 10 minutes with me, and he certainly did not seem to comprehend or understand that I am in a great deal of pain not only from my foot but that I also have other health care issues that affect my foot issue. I realize whole body medicine is a thing of the past, but honestly I am not just a body part. I'm a whole person.
I also realize it is not your fault that [hospital] cares so little for its patients. I was giving [hospital] a second chance but will not give it a third. Thus, I will not be back to see Dr. ______. I will try another doctor not affiliated with [hospital] if I decide to pursue this.
Happy new year to you. I hope 2015 is a good year for you, and that it is the year that [hospital] finds a heart. Goodness knows it needs one.
****
And then I started to post this on FB but didn't:
Not that anyone cares, but I still think [hospital] gives awful service and if I have my way, I will never again see another [hospital] doctor. I'm grateful they saved my husband's hand, but in my experience the doctors there treat women poorly and I do not get decent care at any of their facilities. I am treated as if I'm just in the way and certainly not like a human being. Even my husband has noticed that he is treated better than I am, and we both think it is gender-bias. You'd think a company with a female CEO would remember that half the population is not male.
****
This is just me ranting now here on my blog:
The health care in this valley is terrible. I have been lucky to find a good primary care doctor (not affiliated with any hospital, I might note) and a physical therapist (also not affiliated with any hospital or large health care provider), (and both are female), but otherwise health care here is more about popping pills and taking people's money than saving lives. I am so disgusted with the system that I expect I will die young just because I'm ornery enough to tell them all to go to hell and take their damn pills and leave me alone.
Some things do not work well as businesses. Government is not a business. Health care should not be treated as a business, either. They are entities unto themselves that have separate rules and they should not be lumped under the idiotic capitalistic money-hungry asinine society that we have created to keep people as slaves and servants to the monkeys with the money. For God's sake, will somebody realize that money is the problem and put the human equation back into the mix.
Sucks, doesn't it? I remember when health care providers actually CARED about people.
ReplyDeleteWell..let me tell you something...we live in a small town in western NY--and because of the "affordable healthcare" mandates, our one and only hospital is closing in March! Yep, one will have to drive 40 minutes to a hosp. That, my friend, means a difference between life and death. Scary thought...
ReplyDeleteWe need more people like you to complain etc. Blessings
What on earth does that have to do with doctors employed by private insurance corporations only caring about money? Market forces created the false values that allow doctors to care nothing about the wellbeing of their patients, and hospitals being closed as accountant-determined rationalisation strategies designed to save money to increase profits for shareholders. Not attacking the real villains, the corporate fat cats and their political puppets, only ensures they keep power and can go on pretending that the hugely expensive charade of "care" now on offer is the best health service in the world and should be copied everywhere. Don't let them off the hook! Fight for a national health service!
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