Cornered by Mike Baldwin for August 21, 2024

Identity “heft”.

And that second opinion will be on your bill.

The second opinion is you’re stupid as well.

At least it wasn’t an incomplete stranger.

… what irony, you sent your bill to the wrong insurance company! They probably have no idea what’s wrong with you, either.

Recently it worked the other way for me. Still got the bill but didn’t get the results for 2-1/2 years. Luck for the physician that the hospital failed send me the feedback request to review the experience.

This probably happens more than we know.

mystery patient…

My entire life has been a miss-filing of my records. My first and last names are interchangeable as first and last names, so when records can’t be found I have to tell them to look under my first name. With computers it doesn’t happen as much, but it still happens.

I waited two weeks for that result???

Stranger things have happened.

Have you consulted with Dr. Google yet?

He did mention wanting a second opinion.

Come back next week and the cartoonist will draw some blood.

He passed them on to a second stranger who concurred.

all too real… be sure to read your medical bills carefully. I used to do maintenance work in the clinic of my doctor, and one time I happened to catch a glimpse of my records on a desk, saying I had gone to a specialist in a nearby city for a certain procedure, and I hadn’t! I have no idea who they confused me with, but I had them straighten it out. Patient, beware!

Good. Then send them the payment too, :)

“It became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I’ve ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be.”

Then I’ll have to find a better provider, who knows how to provide medical service and does a better job of protecting my medical records.

To get your records back, you’ll need to make an appointment. We have an opening in six months.

“I’d like a third opinion from another stranger…”

We used to get faxes of patient information to our office (at a college) from doctor’s offices. They seemed pretty unphased when we told them they had been faxed to a random place. Of course I shredded them…