Wednesday, April 13, 2011 – Today I went in to Fort Sanders Regional to get a chest Xray. I’m so tired of going to see doctors, and I said so in my facebook status update when I was there.
The chest Xray was easy. Just one view, one Xray, and then I waited for the tech to make a CD for me to take to the thoracic surgeon. That was the whole point of the Xray… so that my thoracic surgeon can see how my chest (lungs especially) look when I go in for my follow-up appt this coming Monday, April 18.
I was frustrated with the intake system at Patient Services. What else is new. The lady asked me if I had my drivers license and insurance card. I told her that I did, they had already made 7 copies of each this year, and I would be happy to let her make another one. She politely declined.
Then she made the mistake of asking if I was allergic to anything. I was nice about this time, but asked her why she had to ask me that if the information was already in the hospital database. She responded that “it’s policy, and I just follow it.”
She also said that the information she gets from me by asking these questions is not stored by the computer. I wondered what’s the point of getting information from me if they don’t store it, but I guess that’s policy.
I asked her who had power to change hospital policy. She said she didn’t know. She’s probably never thought of that, but she did say that people who had to come to the hospital every week still had to answer all those questions each and every time, and she could sympathize with them.
I’m thinking about writing a letter to the hospital’s board of directors. If they can make things “better” by banning tobacco use in their hospital, maybe they can make things better by improving and optimizing their information flow to make patients’ lives less stressful.
If hospitals didn’t spend so much time getting information about patients from patients, they could spend more time caring for patients medical needs.
The Xray tech was really nice. He did a good job taking my chest Xray, and got me the CD of the Xray so I can take it to the thoracic surgeon on Monday.
Yay for another Dr. appt??? Facebook better watch out for my status update on Monday afternoon!
You can find Andrew on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dancewithandrew
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