I spent 5 hours today doing something that should have taken 5 minutes. Though it wasn’t something that could have taken less time if I didn’t have a broken wrist (well, if I didn’t have a broken wrist I wouldn’t have had to do it at all…), it had nothing to do with the limitations I am only now realizing as a result of my malady. I was given written instruction by St. Vincent’s Hospital Emergency room for follow up care on my wrist. Call this number and schedule an appointment to get your permanent cast. Sounds easy, right?
Wrong. The service levels provided by ANY SERVICE PROVIDER IN THE STATE OF OREGON, so far, maybe even the country, so far I haven’t had to find out, are HORRENDOUS.
At 7am I phoned the number on the written instructions. The girl who took my call told me I was calling the wrong place (she barely asked me anything except why was I calling, and I mentioned “city call” as it says on the instructions) and gave me another number. I called it and got a recording to call back at 8am. I hung up and called St. Vincent’s, and told them the information on their sheet needs updating. She put me on hold for 10 minutes, then came back on to tell me “Thank you” in a sing-song voice. I drove to work.
At 8:05am I phoned the new number again, and instead of the recording giving me the hours of operation, I got one telling me this was an answering service, please leave your ID number, your case number, and your patient’s name at the tone and someone would get back to me. Like hell. I had none of these things and I knew that if I tried leaving anything other than these things, no one would have ever phoned me back. Next I called the original number given by the ER in writing and waited on hold for no less than 25 minutes. I told my story to the “appointment taker” and she asked if I had insurance – I told her yes. She told me that the place I was calling only dealt with the uninsured and indigent, and that I needed to call my own insurance and ask them what to do. By now I am getting more and more angry (oh, and because BEFORE she took the time to ask me what my issue was, she just threw another number at me to call).
So I call Blue Cross/Blue Shield and get to a rep and she is pretty helpful and says well, why don’t we just find you an in-plan orthopedic specialist and he can do your cast. So she finds one, and I phone them, and explain yet AGAIN my story, and she says, well, this office doesn’t do casts at all. The ER should have done it. She said she would set me up as a new patient but the doctor was planning to leave the country soon and I still needed a cast. I thanked her (not her fault, at this point I am just making random calls) and then phoned the ER again.
I told the ER gal what was happening (have I mentioned it’s now 10am?) and she said, well, Kaiser shouldn’t have told you that. I said, you know, I know that and YOU know that, but apparently KAISER doesn’t know that. She heard how near I was to sobbing and told me that either she or Kaiser would call me back. Success??
Not quite yet. Someone phoned me back, about an hour later. So now it's 11:30am this person calls and says, Oh I can't believe the runaround! Neither can I! She gives me yet ANOTHER number and says, give me 5 minutes to call them and tell them you are calling. I do this, and don't you know that when I phoned 7 minutes later, NO ONE KNEW WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT? I asked the girl to please stand up and just yell my name and see if it sounded familiar to anyone. No dice. Finally, back off another 10 minutes of hold, someone knows what to do and sets me an appointment for tomorrow morning. I hung up the phone at 12 noon.
It was easier to blame it on a language barrier. But this is MY country, MY language. These people, seriously, DO NOT WANT TO HELP. I can't believe it. I am just sick about it.
