IN PRAISE OF DIFFICULT WOMEN
Again, some tips and tricks to facilitate your hospital paperwork experience.
1) If someone in front of you is recieving instructions from the person behind the counter, do not (a) start breathing heavily on the patient in front of you; (b) start using your shoulder to move the person who is speaking to the employee out of the way; (c) just start talking over the person ahead of you or (d) tell said employee "THE DOCTOR WANTS ME BACK THERE NOW!".
2) Do not become offended when offered
another piece of paperwork to fill out. Trust me - we HATE the paperwork as well, if I could find a way to fix the system I would. As I am a lowly support employee I am not important enough to change the system. Trust me - I've been told.
3) Do not walk up to the desk and immediately treat the person working like a moron. Sometimes they are - trust me - again, I know this. But a lot of the time they are not. And they are paid like shit to be the buffer between the money parts and the god like doctor parts. It may be one of the worst jobs in America - but sometimes you might have someone intelligent working there.
4) KNOW YOUR INSURANCE COVERAGE. It is not my problem. We live in a country with private health care. If we had National Health Coverage (a.k.a. - like the communists/rest of the western world) I could probably figure out your insurance plan. But as we are on a employee provided system I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOUR EMPLOYER BOUGHT. That's right, if you paid attention during your benefits period - you would know what insurance you have. It's not cool to just say 'you have it on file'. Keep bitching when you recieve your bill because your claim center moved. Ha fucking ha.
5) Do not stay on your phone and just hand me shit. That's just tacky.
6) Is there a class in b-school that is titled - HOW TO TREAT PEOPLE LIKE CRAP 300 - 'cause I can tell an MBA from like 500 feet. What's up with that?
Today classifies as boredom. No patients. Except that I may make a new set of rules for overpaid urology surgeons:
1) If your patient is coming for testing and you know it - send the pre-op clinic his ORDERS.
2) Do not tell the registration people 'generic tests' and then get angry at the pre-op clinic for not performing tests YOU NEVER TOLD THEM TO DO.
3) You are a DOCTOR's office. A doctor is to help a patient. The WHOLE patient. Not just the patient's breast, ankle, penis, knee, heart, lung (insert diseased organ/body part of choice here).
4) If your patient is from an 'alternative' lifestyle - i.e. usually crazy and homeless, we will gladly take care of them - BUT tell us first. We just don't know that someone will be a 3 hour appointment when you send them to see us at 5 PM the day before their surgery.
5) It's a pre-op clinic and not a psychic service.
6) Don't be scared that we are charging them for their tests and internal medicine visits. Yes, it's a bit of an investment, but it will prevent your malpractice claims, motherfucker. Don't discourage a physical because it cuts into your profit (see rule 3).
That's all for today. It's the weekend. Yay. Wait until Monday when someone really riles me up.
