Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
Well here’s one. My wife has an issue and booked a doctors appointment. They were pretty sure they knew the issue and sent her to a specialist. Makes sense. The specialist does a test, confirms the issue and says “here’s what you should do for treatment”. The catch is, now my wife has to book another time with the family doctor, to get a referral for this treatment, and then get the treatment. It’s just wasting everyone’s time. Similar things happen with prescriptions for all kinds of ongoing things. You can get some doctors to issue a renewal, but others make you go in and have an appointment.
To me, the issue here is pretty simple to change. Less of these appointments means more times available for people who are actually in need of seeing doctors.
We had another issue in the hospital this year, where we waited for a report from radiology. It took hours for the report, and I was within earshot of the nurses desk/station. A significant hold up was the nurse called radiology and the radiologist wouldn’t report to her. Instead the doctor from ER had to call and speak to the radiologist directly…to report that it was all clear! I understand that approach of there’s something complex or whatever. But those kinds of delays are just plain ridiculous. Meanwhile, a bed is taken and held up while people are sitting in the waiting room.
I’m just a layman, but there’s no way I’m the only one with these kinds of stories. There are obviously issues in the structures within AHS. I had another example but decided I don’t want to get into it on a public site.
|
Another anecdote - My wife broke a small bone in her foot a few years ago. Urgent care did an inconclusive x-ray and issued an air cast. After that, she saw her family doctor every other week for 3 months and had three more x-rays. With no apparent improvement (after 6 or 7 visits), the family Dr. finally referred her to an orthopedic surgeon. That consult lasted all of 5 minutes, when the orthopedic Dr. explained that, unless you're a professional athlete, 'they' don't do anything and the best course of action was to "take it easy, but walk gingerly on it until you can bear more and more weight"... She was fine in about 10 days... 7 family Dr visits, 3 additional x-rays and all for not.
Now it's hard to say if this is a failure of the system of just incompetence on the part of one Dr., but again, I can't believe something like this is an isolated incident where resources like this are unnecessarily wasted.