Therapy to get through Therapy

Today was my 6th appointment with Novacare, the hand therapy people.

I'm thinking I will need some "emotional" therapy to recover from my experience there.

Also, I'm not only strengthening my wrist, but I'm strengthening my opinion that National Health Care is BAD.

Here's my story.

After wrist surgery, doctor recommends hand therapy. Tells me to see Mary or Stephanie at Novacare because they have both been doing this for 30 years.

I call and make an appointment with Stephanie. Mary is on vacation. Stephanie is only available on the Thursday that the blizzard was predicted. I decide that I need to get going on the wrist, make an appointment with Stephanie, and find myself driving in a blizzard to see her.

I get to the office and Karen comes out and says, "Hi, I am Karen, Stephanie is doing a phone interview so I will be your therapist today."

I say (feeling kind of sheepish), "Um, I came out in a blizzard to see Stephanie, I don't mean to offend you, Karen, but my doctor told me to see Mary or Stephanie."

Karen gets Stephanie and she postpones her phone conversation.

Four days later, I arrive for my appointment with Stephanie. Terri comes out and says, "Hi, I'm Terri. Stephanie isn't here today, so I will be doing your therapy." Turns out she is a "substitute" hand therapist who floats from office to hospital filling in as needed.

Three days later at my next appointment, Stephanie comes out and says, "Hi, this is Lance, he is training in and will be assisting me today." Lance is nice enough, but does all the measurements differently than Stephanie, so all my comparisons are off.

Next appointment, I get Stephanie for the full hour.

Last Thursday I go to my 10:00 am appointment. Stephanie comes out of her office at 10:05 and says, "Linda, you are a half hour late." I said, "No, I'm not. My appointment was at 10:00. I have a printout at home that your office gave me." Stephanie says, "Your appointment was at 9:30, I have another appointment at 10:30, so unless you can come back at 1:00 I can only give you a half hour, and can try to find another therapist to fill in."

MamaD turns into MaMad at this point. I say very little and take my half hour with her, wait 10 minutes for Karen to finish up with a patient and give me 15 more minutes. i'm guessing Blue Cross got billed for a full 60 minutes. Stephanie tells me to bring in the printout showing the appointment time.

Today I go in with my appointment sheet in hand showing that my appointment was indeed for 10:00 last week. Stephanie looks at it and suggests that perhaps I have done the highlighting on the sheet. (It was a crazy printout that showed all available morning appointments, very odd printout system.) I assure her that her fellow employee had highlighted said paper and I also tell her that I felt like I was treated like a second hand patient.

Stephanie never apologizes. When the appointment ends, Stephanie takes the printout and says, "I will go up with you to the desk and you can explain the scheduling problem to them." MaMad musters up all of her Scandinavian courage and says, "Um, I am not comfortable doing that. I think this is a problem in your office scheduling that should be addressed and corrected by you.

I made my next appointment with Karen.

If this is the way paying customers are treated, can you imagine how it will be when the government gets ahold of it.

I was thinking about how this would work in any other business. Say, for example, my hair stylist. For 15 years, Sandy has cut my hair. When she is unavailable, I go to Amy. What would happen if I went in to see Sandy and "Karen" came up and said, "Sandy is on the phone, so I will cut your hair," and the next time "Terri" came up and said, "Sandy didn't come in today, so I am filling in for her," or the next time Sandy was there and said, "Lance is going to do a few snips today, he's training in," or another time Sandy said, "Linda, you are a half hour late, so I am not going to be able to dry and style your hair."

Here's what would happen. Sandy would not be cutting my hair anymore!

But, alas, I want my wrist to move, and probably wouldn't be served best by changing therapist offices halfway through my treatment, so I will stick with Novacare, but I am eying the "evaluation" forms on the counter by the front desk, and when I'm done I will refer them to my blog!