Our health care system could be improved! (understatement!!)

April 4, 2010
When this is all over, I want to change career and help President Obama get this new health care system organized. I'll do it for free!! I consider myself a fairly typical patient with a pretty serious illness. I won't go into health insurance issues because those are just too frustrating, let's just say I'm glad I have insurance, though I wish I didn't have a $500 copay for each and every ambulatory service.

In the last month I have spent hours and hours seeing doctors, getting stuck with needles and IVs, being put to sleep, woken up, prodded and tested. Each visit costs me money in two ways. Firstly I have a massive copay (on top of the massive monthly premium) and secondly, while I'm taking half and full days to have all these tests, I cannot work and, being self-employed, this is something of an issue. The bills are piling up.

Today was a good example of medical inefficiency. This was my gastro day, scoped from both ends to check that the lobular cell brigade hadn't marched south or north. I've had a colonoscopy before and it's not a huge deal. The prep, where you get to drink 2 liters of a foul tasting potion guaranteed to give you the runs, is the worst part. Once you get to the G.I. lab, they stick you with an IV and send you to la-la land, which is really nice. When you wake you up, they give you a cookie and off you wobble, propped up by your designated driver. The rest of the day you're in a fog.

The day after tomorrow I have to have the port put in. I'll go to the Radiology Dept, which is right next door to the G.I. lab, they'll stick an IV into me, send me to la-la land again, do their thing and there's another day in a fog.

Knowing that these two departments are right next door to each other, I did what I thought was a very clever thing and booked both procedures for the same day, figuring they could knock me out, put in the port, then wheel me next door to scope my innards, all on the same ticket. With more careful planning, I could have had the bone scan and echocardiogram on the same day too. One day in the hospital and it would all be over and done with.

But NO!! Not allowed. "Oh no, dear," said the lady in the bookings department. "Those are two different departments in the hospital." "But they're right next door to each other," I explained. "If I have them together then I only have one copay." I argued and argued. I called Dr Z. who thought I was quite right but this wasn't his call. Bottom line, there was no way to do all this on one day.

Now I've never been to the Mayo Clinic or the other fancy places where people go to have a full body work-up done. I suspect that these de-luxe tune-ups aren't covered by insurance but I'm pretty sure people don't spend more than a couple of days there having a whole slew of procedures, including most of what I've had done. So why couldn't I book procedures back to back? Does it all come down to insurance? No-one seemed to have an answer. The doctors didn't know, the booking people had their instructions, the billing department was just following orders. When the fog lifts, I think I'm going to do some more digging.

I do have some excellent news, though, and that is that all scopes and scans came back CLEAN. So no errant lobular scout cells in the bones or colon or upper G.I. Hallelujah!