Pluggers by Rick McKee for October 19, 2024

Don’t forget the list of all your current medications.

and bring your medications with you, too. I guess they don’t trust your list.

Never had to do that one :-)

Naah. This is how me looks trying to reads comics and leaves a comments on me teeny tiny device using me bear hands.

What bugs me is when they ask me every year what my gender is. Even if they’ve been seeing me for 20 years. “Doc, if you can’t tell, you’re not qualified to be my doctor!!!”

Never buy a smart phone, mine failed the annual Medicare elderly mental competency exam. Drawing a three-legged table is a failure as is a clock with Roman numerals. If you do not understand now you will.

My clinic is on a digital system and all I need to do is verify there haven’t been any changes.

That’s why my wife and I have that information in the computer. We print it out and give it to the reseptionist and let them type it or scan it in.

Years ago, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer and I was taking her to the surgeon who would be putting in the port-a-cath. She and the surgeon were on a first-name basis — had known each other for years. The nurse asked about medicines, we listed them and then showed her the bottles. The PA came in and asked. When the surgeon finally came in he said he had set up her surgery for the following day — I raised my hand and reminded him that one of the meds on the list in his hands was Coumadin — a blood thinner — and she had always been told to stop taking it for 5 days before any surgery. He looked surprised and then carefully read the list and rescheduled her surgery until the next week. It pays to have another set of ears and eyes along when talking with a doctor.

I’ve been going to the same HMO for over 50 years. They’ve had computers for a good share of that time. I’ve input data on the waiting room clipboard here and there for all that time. I think they know just about everything by now. Yet I still get asked for some of the most basic of information. I think they’re trying to catch me in a lie. As for listing my current medications, YOU PRESCRIBED THEM! I TAKE WHAT YOU GIVE ME!

I only had to resubmit 7 times.

OMG! This is the medical insurance experience. Every time I call my primary caregiver’s office, I’m starting over from “ground zero”. The rule is: if they are paid so little they can be put on phone duty, they aren’t paid enough to know anything. No one seems to have any record of my last three calls on the same subject. I asked them to give me an email address so I don’t have to keep phonetically spelling the same things over and over. They did give me one but nobody ever acknowledges a message.

You can never speak to anyone in authority. I put in the same requests for weeks, then have to call the insurance company to intervene and even they cannot get through on the phone and the voicemail is often full. I am fortunate enough to be able to be my own advocate but I’m sure people are dying sooner because they have given up.

I go online to my health care provider website to get the list of medications and medical history so I can answer the questions when I go in for an appointment so they can enter my answers into their database.

My doctor asked me when my last vaccine of some kind was and I told him, “I don’t know, I’ll have to get my computer and look it up on your website.”

I keep an updated printout with me and hand it to them.

Been going to the same PCP for 25+ years, every year they do a family history question and bill BCBS/Medicare $50+ and Medicare will pay $10.

I think most of the questions are to cover their butts in the event a malpractice lawsuit