Thursday I spent most of it in bed sleeping, and then later, about 17:00 that evening I was at pain level 10 and in tears, so I took my 10 mg of Oxycodone and decided to wait 40 minutes before calling my palliative care docotor's office. Of course I was going to get an after hours response. but I wanted to be sure I had given the Oxy some time to work. Well it did take the pain down to about 6 or so, but I was ready for more relief and I called. Often these after hours contacts don't really achieve much because I will first get an operator who will then take down my complaint - then they phone a nurse practitioner who is supposed to call me back in 30 minutes. Then they get me to repeat the information I gave the operator, and they will pass that onto a doctor who will call me back in 30 minutes. And what do you suppose the doctor then does but ask me to repeat myself yet a third time.
Well after that process, I got a doctor who essentially told me to take a Tylenol.
But what this does do it get me flagged on a couple of phone lists so that both Dr. Krivitsky's and Dr. Burgess's office will call me in the morning. And while I am also working some of my outgoing calls, this sets up for a train wreck of phone tag between the various offices. It was a little after noon before I got everyone settled in.
I have been singing praises of Carolinas Medical Center for a few months now, and lets understand that is for the professionalism and skill of everyone on staff. But I do have to say there are two things that CMC consistently fails to deliver. The first is the recent change of the food vendor for the patients in the hospital. It's not really bad, but I do find myself rejecting 30-40% of the meals I'm offered. The previous vendor they had last September was excellent.
The second thing they are terrible with is their blinking phone system. Just yesterday, I was in to get an EKG and I had incorrectly noted the clinic where I was supposed to have it done. So I tried to call Dr. Krivitsky's office to get the instructions repeated. It was 2 PM Thursday - most of us would consider this normal working hours. I was greeted by a phone message asking me to leave a message and they would call me back.
Seriously? You can't answer the phone directly during normal working hours ? How inefficient is that ? Oh and they never returned the call!
I talked with Dr. Bobo, the Radiologist about it, and he says that the staff have frequently complained to CMC management that they have very difficult times being able to communicate with their patients because of this phone system that has been contracted. It's a problem with all CMC clinics.
Dr. Bobo also went on to say that most of the staff have their own personal cell phones to be able to get around the system and communicate with each other directly. e.g. Dr. Bobo can not get in touch with Dr. Burgess using CMC's phone system, they have to call each other on personal phones.
As a computer programmer who has built many types of automated systems, it just frosts my cookies to see such a terrible system in use, and to know someone is actually making money selling such a horrible system to a hospital. But further, I blame CMC for not waking up to the fact they have a problem and they need to dump their current vendor and get something that works.
I had intended to write and post this yesterday. I have quite a few things to report about yesterday!
Well I shall make that as a separate post today.
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