Medical Incompetence (fit in, health insurance, house)

[dutchman09]

On June 24th I visited a Cardiologist at Southwest Heart in the Carondelet Medical Plaza behind St. Joesph's Hospital. He prescribed blood pressure and diuretic medication since my current similar prescriptions from another doctor were not doing anything. I mailed both prescriptions to Walgreen's mail service which they received on June 26th. On July 3rd I called Walgreen's mail service to find out the status of the prescriptions. They told me they had called the doctors office on June 30th and were still waiting for a call back. The reason they needed to speak with the doctor was because he neglected to put a "form of" on the script, such as CD, XT, ER, LA, etc., meaning extended release or other 'coded' instructions. Naturally I immediately called the doctors office only to find out they were closed because of the holiday. So I spent another weekend measuring how high my blood pressure would go and had my wife keep putting on compression stockings for my swollen feet and ankles which have reached a point where my ankle bone has disappeared and I hardly fit into my house slippers. Monday morning, now it's July 6th, I called the doctors office to find out why they never returned Walgreen's inquiry from a week before. The doctor's medical assistant first answered "Because I never got the call"! I asked her to look in my chart and she came back and said "Oh yes, they did call last Tuesday". The obvious question "Why didn't anyone call back"? I was put on hold for approximately 10 minutes and was then told "The chart was in Medical Records". Now I ask anyone reading this...where else was it supposed to be? Seems to me, nobody bothered! That afternoon I was notified by Walgreen's that the order would be shipped the next day. Today is July 9th and still nothing. I have an appointment with this Cardiologist on Monday. Can anyone guess what I am going to ask him when he asks me "How's the new medication working"?

[dintymoore]

whew- sorry to hear about all of this...

Make no mistake about it - the system is broken.

You can't count on anyone and basically you have to design your own health program. The doctors are, in my opinion, basically good but so overworked that they are numb. They can't care about you like they should, but it's not because they're rotten people, it's because they are overwhelmed.

You can, even if you have no health insurance, go to the ER and wait for hours as a last resort and get some sort of help. Not everybody knows this but because of the Hypocratic Oath you don't need any insurance and they are still obligated to help you.