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I have written a lot over the years about the current crisis in medical care and how, now that I am retired, I try to help family and friends navigate our damaged system. It reached comic absurdity today. I had heard from one of my sisters that my nephew Brian, the son of my other sister, was having major back surgery. I confirmed that with Janet, Brian's mom. I told her to have Brian send me his imaging studies and I would discuss them with him. So he did, but I didn't really have any history about what he was dealing with. The images looked quite normal. I texted him based on the phone number he had written on the MRI package to give him a preliminary impression, but got no response. So I called the number and it just rang with no voicemail. So after a while I worried that maybe I had the wrong number and I called Janet for his number. She gave me a number just one digit from the number I had, but when I texted that number with my preliminary report and a request for him to call me, I got a text from someone named Amber that there was no one named Brian at that number. So I called my sister back and finally got the right number, which was again one digit off what I had written down. After I finally talked to Brian, I found out that he was now doing quite well and had canceled his surgery. I texted Amber, whoever she was, that everything had turned out well and Brian was going to be fine.
So tonight I learned that Janet, Brian, and perhaps Amber are all doing well. I spent about five hours trying to be helpful and I know Janet and Brian are appreciative, but I am not so sure about Amber.
Discussion (20)
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I came back from work and found a message on my answering machine that stated "This is Kevin. Jennifer and I managed to get away a day early so we'll be seeing you tonight rather than tomorrow night. We'll be able to park the camper in your driveway for the night."
I don't know Kevin and Jennifer. I didn't even have a driveway. I do hope things worked out for everybody.
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I told Amber to call and let them know.
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"I don't think if you call a number that's just one digit off, you should get a completely different person. If you're that close, you should at least get someone who knows where they are." - Rita Rudner
[close enough, anyway]
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And this is the reason why I never left messages with patients when doing preoperative phone calls. Yet, most all medical facilities will leave messages about your upcoming visit/procedure all the time. So much for HIPPA. Which has always been a joke.
Glad your nephew canceled his surgery. Always nice to have a trusted opinion.
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I love how under HIPPA you can't use normal texts or email, has to be a "secured system".
But Faxing information is OK. One digit wrong and you sent it all to the local Chinese takeout.
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