I recently went to the Doctor’s office for a specific checkup. It took about 4 hours total, and I spent about one hour of that time cooling my heels waiting either for the doctor or a lab technician. After I saw the Doc, he said he would call in a scrip to my pharmacy. Later that day, no word from the Doc to the pharmacy.<\/p>\n
I tried to call back the next day, and fought my way through their phone system for a full five minutes to eventually get stuck leaving a voicemail. They never called me back, nor did they call the pharmacy.<\/p>\n
I let it sit a couple days while I waited for them, and eventually decided to give Tolerant a break from nagging me and tried to call them back – and all of their published phone numbers rang through to the fax machine. 5 different times.<\/p>\n
Waited another couple days, called back on three different occasions. The first two saw me fighting through their phone system only to get voicemail again, but the third time I called I finally managed to get a human, who said she would make sure the scrip got called in. When I went to pick up said scrip, it turned out to be for an over-the-counter medicine<\/em> and some special instructions that he fucking well could have handed me in person and just told me what to buy.<\/p>\n In total, the bill came up as $131 in labs and $217 for the visit. The insurance company will only allow them to charge a certain amount, so I then received a bill for the difference. Add all of that up and divide by the three hours, and you get a number a bit less than what my company charges for an hour of my time. Here’s the difference:<\/p>\n If I keep you waiting while I do something for somebody else, I don’t bill you for the time.<\/p>\n If I tell you that you need a part or some software, I will tell you what it is, why you need it, and why you should get this particular brand. I will then sell it to you. If I can’t sell it to you, I will provide you with explicit instructions on where to get it as well.<\/p>\n If for some reason you need to call my office, you will be told by the prompter to press a number for each department, at which point a human will answer the phone. You will not be forced to go through a minimum of 5 minutes of recorded messages before a human might<\/em> pick up.<\/p>\n My phone system will never put you through to the fax machine.<\/p>\n My clients will call me the next time they have a problem. I won’t be calling my doctor again, I will be going somewhere else.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"