A hospital responds to a patient advocate

Apparently they weren’t too forthcoming with information:

“What do you need this information for?” he said. “Let me tell you where I’m coming from. When I take my car to the mechanic, and he says this and this and this is wrong with the carburetor, I don’t even listen. I’m not a mechanic. So what good will this information do you? You’re not a doctor.”

Comments

Anonymous
And physicians wonder why people say they have to file lawsuits to get answers.
jb
People say that they file lawsuits to get answers. I’ll believe that when they start withdrawing their lawsuits when they get their answers. The only answer they are satisfied with is “Here’s your check with a large number on the end of the first line.”
Anonymous
That’s the answer to the question – how am I going to pay all these other docs to fix the damage the defendant caused.
SarahW
I’ve run into this trouble with staff but never phsyicians.
ONe clerk actually demanded *why* I wanted my thyroid biopsy results. (FWIW I’d prearranged with the physician to get them as soon as they were available) Can you imagine a stupider question?
Diora
Once the nurse who took my blood pressure during a routine office visit asked me why? when I asked what my blood pressure was as she was writing the numbers down. I said “just curious”. Really, how long does it take to a nurse to tell you the numbers as she writes them down? I thought it takes less time to say 2 numbers than to write them… Oh is it a military secret?
Anonymous
Thank HIPAA. Some secretaries, nurses, etc. take confidentiality to the extreme, meaning info should also be keft confidential from even the patient
Anonymous
“ONe clerk actually demanded *why* I wanted my thyroid biopsy results. (FWIW I’d prearranged with the physician to get them as soon as they were available) Can you imagine a stupider question?”
No, but I had an encounter that was about as frustrating. I went to a surgeon’s office a week after a surgical biopsy for an appt. he scheduled to go over the results. When I checked in, the receptionist couldn’t find my chart. Neither could the rest of the desk staff. For about ten minutes half a dozen staff were buzzing through the corridors looking for my chart. Eventually a nurse came to the front shouting, “I found it! It was in the utility room!” Then I was called back to the exam room, where the surgeon flipped open the chart…and continued flipping…no test results. He excused himself and came back ten minutes later saying, “It was just benign!” And I had the good sense not to reply, “What a nice surprise for both of us…”
Anonymous
I have never really received a hard time getting copies of my biopsy reports. I get copies of the procedure report and the path reports. I also pick up my slides to have them second opinioned at a different path lab. I get copies of all my x-rays or MRIs. they are my results. Why in the world would I not be allowed to have them?
I get copies of any thing any mechanic is doing to my car. I once had a mechanic tell me I needed a new clutch on my 65 mustang. I knew I didn’t but hey I was a woman in a man’s world. I told him ok to put a new clutch on it but I wanted to watch while he removed the old one and I also wanted to keep the old one. He soon changed his story and moved on to the brakes or somthing. can’t remember.
I hear doctors on here make this comparison to auto work all the time. Human beings aren’t a piece of equipement. Cars don’t have feelings or suffer pains. If a mechanic puts a faulty piece on our cars we can just take it back and he can replace it. When you put a faulty piece in us the solution is not that simple. We suffer the consequences of your actions. I sure as hell hope you are more precise than the auto mechanic. I wish you would please stop using that as a reference. It lowers your profession. Auto mechanics do not have 10-12 years of education.
This also amazes me about physicians….One of you made the comment a few weeks ago that if he is having a house built he isn’t going to request any documentation from the builder..Thats amazing to me..Don’t any of you ever get any documentations for anything anyone tells you needs done? I bet builders, plumbers, mechanics, etc…love to see you guys walk in.
Anonymous
“This also amazes me about physicians….One of you made the comment a few weeks ago that if he is having a house built he isn’t going to request any documentation from the builder”
First of all, congratulations on your skill at communicating with your providers. I tend to fail miserably at that, so I appreciate your contributions to these message boards.
I’m not the doctor who made that post you’re referring to from a few weeks ago — I’m the patient whose question elicited his/her response. But I thought the doctor made a good point which may have been overlooked.
He/she (I felt) was emphasizing that patients who feel the need to get involved in their medical treatment might benefit from putting more of that research into the choosing of their providers. Then, having found a provider whose background and references satisfies them, the patients might feel more confident in the doctor’s decisions about their care.
It’s not a bad point at all. I know a number of people, myself included, who have chosen doctors for fairly haphazard reasons, like their location or they have a pronounceable last name.
Anyway, like everyone else, I like to have doctors who are willing to be open with information. But I know that I need to be more intelligent about how I select those providers, too.
L
I don’t ask directly for copies of records/reports/results for myself, though that’s often the reason. I’ll tell the clerk that my family doctor has asked me to get the documents, for a follow-up visit with him/her. If the clerk won’t give me a copy at that point, I’ll ask them to fax a copy to my family doctor’s office. Works about ~80% of the time.
Either most clerks are clueless that a patient has the legal right to a copy of anything in their chart, or the clerks have been instructed by the doctors/providers they work for to not give any documents to a patient directly. One can speculate on the reasons for the above.
Luckily for me, my family doctor’s office staff will give me copies of anything in my chart, no questions asked.
And if I go to see another specialist for the same condition, they really appreciate it if I bring along relevant paperwork from prior care I’ve recieved. One shouldn’t assume that patients ask for documents for trivial reasons, or assume that they’re about to run off to a lawyer’s office.
Greg P
It’s entirely possible, given the source, that this story is either made up, or at least distorted.
The consistent theme is “Intelligent, persistent patient advocates taking medicos to the mat.”
If someone wants information from me that they’re entitled to. they get it. But these days, so many come on like F Lee Bailey spouting out legal rights, or macho Clint Eastwood with six-guns drawn. Totally unnecessary, and really obnoxious.
Anonymous
Greg P., you may always release your records without any problem but not everbody does. I had a problem getting records from one physician. I sent repeated records requests and received no response. I finally got smart and sent it certified so he couldn’t ignore it. At that point, he pretended he never got the previous requests, which I find interesting since he always seemed to receive the checks for payment at the same address.

A hospital responds to a patient advocate

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