Tonight's picture was taken in February of 2009. Mattie was sitting on his hospital bed and surrounded by boxes of valentine's he received from classmates in first grade. Mattie even got a huge lollipop as a gift. Mattie never attended even a single day of first grade. But it was very nice that his school included him in this valentine's tradition.
Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.
- Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 27,682,645
- Number of people who died from the virus: 486,111
I woke this morning determined to get a hold of my doctor, in order to get antibiotics for what I deem a sinus infection. I typically get them at this time of year and I have the classic symptoms (headache, post nasal drip, sore throat, discharge from nose, and nasal congestion). The experience I had was over the top, so much so that I wrote a letter to my doctor's practice. You can get a feeling for my two hour ordeal but reading the letter below!
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I am writing to you to let you know about the patient experience with your practice today, February 15th. I called the main number to the office today because I am experiencing a sinus infection. Given that it is a federal holiday, I expected to hear a recording of the after hours number to call and instructions on how to proceed.
That is not what I heard, instead, I heard the usual recording and pressed #7 to speak to your receptionist. Once I did that, I heard a recording that there were 6 other patients on the line and therefore I had to wait my turn on the phone. I literally waited 30 minutes and gave up.
Then I emailed you my concern as well as left a voicemail on your physician phone line. After which, I called the after hours number on your website. To my amazement, I was connected (not to your answering service like in the past) to a nurse who took down my information and said the on-call physician from your practice would get back to me in 30 minutes (by 10am). If I did not hear back in 30 minutes, I was told to call back.
At 10am, I called back and this time got C., the head of the nursing line. He saw that I called at 9:20am, and explained to me that I could make an appointment today at another practice to be examined by a physician. As a patient of YOUR practice, I was absolutely confused at to why I would get referred to your "sister" practice. If I am patient under your office's care, I expect to be connected to your on-call physician after hours.
C. understood my feelings on this and said that he would send another message to your practice's on-call physician. Needless to say, I never heard from your practice today. C. then called me back at 11am and said that your office never turned on the after hours or holiday back up system making it impossible to reach a physician in your practice today.
C. instead encouraged me to go to a patient website and schedule a virtual appointment, as he knew I wasn't going to venture out to your sister practice. I was able to get a virtual visit with a physician and got access to antibiotics (after less than a 5 minute video call). But this is not the user experience I signed up for when I joined your practice. Fortunately my issue wasn't serious, because if I had a serious issue, I would feel absolutely disconnected and unsupported from your practice. A relationship between a patient and physician is special and when ill, we want to interface with the practice that knows us. Not be told to visit a "sister" practice or worse be shuttled online to interact with a physician who doesn't know us at all.
I would like to hear about your practice's after hour policy. Somehow as a long term patient with you, I had no idea that the practice migrated away from direct interaction with an on-call physician in your practice during holidays, evenings, and weekends. Moving forward I would like to know if this is indeed your practice's policy or an anomaly that happened today. If this is the direction the practice is moving toward, I will need to seriously consider my options.
It is my hope to hear back from you or your office manager because I consider what transpired today to be below standard of care and practice.
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