Friday, January 24, 2003

More ranting on the health care front: Answering Machines

It seems to me that the latest protocol for medical practice office administration is to have an automatic answering mechanism that forces patients who call in to go through six menus of options, punch in nine different codes each followed by the “pound sign”, and end up in someone’s voice mail box.

If the patient is lucky enough to end up with the correct voice mailbox, the usual greeting is “You have reached the message center for ______. I am sorry but I am either away from my desk right now assisting patients or on another line. Please leave your name, phone number, the name of the doctor you normally see, the reason for your call, and what date and time is convenient for your next appointment. Please don’t leave multiple messages because due to the high volume of calls, it may delay our response.”

If luck further holds out, the patient actually receives a call back. I never seem to have such luck.

In December I placed a follow up call to my orthopedic surgeon as to the status of an MRI authorization that was supposedly requested in early November. No one called me back. Not wanting to leave multiple messages and delay a response I dutifully waited until January to call in again. This time I actually got a return call from a young lady who apologized profusely that my request had been misfiled but she assured me that an urgent request would be made that very day. Two weeks later I received a denial for the MRI. At least I know there was an attempt made. Two days ago I made a follow up call to the same doctors office regarding the denial. No response has come yet. So the question is, if I call back again today am I guilty of leaving multiple messages? What is the protocol? #########

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