Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Paging Dr. Yossarian
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Yesterday I received this fax from a pharmacy company. As best I understand it, they don't authorize the drug involved... So to get it covered I need to call...
A Blog detailing the insanity of my medical practice and the stupidity of everyday life.
Welcome to my whining!
This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients, or my everyday life, or anything else may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate. I could be making all this up. I may not even be a doctor. The only true statement on here is that I probably drink more Diet Coke than you do. A lot more.
Singing Foo!
Singing Foo!
Twitter fans- you can follow me @docgrumpy
Cast of Characters:
Annie: My Phenomenal MA
Mary: My Awesome Secretary
Ed: The office fish
Dr. Pissy: The guy I share an office with
Mrs. Grumpy: My Boss (also the world's greatest school nurse)
Frank, Craig, and Marie: The Grumpy Tribe
Garlic and Riley: The Grumpy Dogs
Questions? Comments? Biting sarcasm? Write to: pagingdrgrumpy [at] gmail [dot] com
Note: I do not answer medical questions. If you are having a medical issue, see your own doctor. For all you know I'm really a Mongolian yak herder and have no medical training at all except in issues regarding the care and feeding of Mongolian yaks.
Cast of Characters:
Annie: My Phenomenal MA
Mary: My Awesome Secretary
Ed: The office fish
Dr. Pissy: The guy I share an office with
Mrs. Grumpy: My Boss (also the world's greatest school nurse)
Frank, Craig, and Marie: The Grumpy Tribe
Garlic and Riley: The Grumpy Dogs
Questions? Comments? Biting sarcasm? Write to: pagingdrgrumpy [at] gmail [dot] com
Note: I do not answer medical questions. If you are having a medical issue, see your own doctor. For all you know I'm really a Mongolian yak herder and have no medical training at all except in issues regarding the care and feeding of Mongolian yaks.
Blog Archive
-
▼
2013
(299)
-
▼
December
(27)
- Boxing Day sales
- BREAKING MEDICAL RESEARCH!!!
- Christmas day, 2:10 p.m.
- December 25, 1914
- Winter vacation ditziness
- Best used car ad EVER
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
- Commodity trading
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
- Holiday memories
- The fun ships
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
- Dude, remember to turn off your microphone
- On call, Sunday morning, 2:18 a.m.
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
- Mary's desk, December, 2013
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
- Come on, baby, light my fire
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
- Dr. Grumpy's Gift Guide
- Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
- Paging Dr. Yossarian
- The telltale cup
- Dr. Grumpy's gift guide
-
▼
December
(27)
14 comments:
Brave new world
Pretty sums up everything wrong with American health care.
I didn't even realize that Comcast was in the health care business.
Well isn't that ... special. And Optum's my dad's Rx provider.
Went to a Medicare supplement sales session yesterday. She had a hard time wording: "We don't cover a lot of stuff, but you can always appeal a denial." Do they always approve an appeal? "Ummmm...no."
"There, there," Yossarian said, because he did not know what else to say. "There, there."
And, around, and round, and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows.
Welcome to the f-ing fantastic world of pharmacy.
I'm thinking of making a collage with all the medicare/medicaid denial letters my office receives...maybe copy them on brightly colored paper to brighten things up. And they all come with pages and pages of appeal instructions. The last instruction should read: Don't bother!
Great! that will be our rx insurance this coming year. So far all I can figure out is it's costing us $200 more a month and doesn't cover ANYTHING!
Yes, par for the course with optum Rx. They tried to force my daughter to have growth hormone stimulation testing on a next to nonexistent pituitary verified with imaging... You know, to make sure she REALLY doesn't produce her own, in spite of years of clinical documentation to that effect. 5 months, 2 appeals and an escalation later we got approved. It was bloody.
Your prescription could have been an error, or an extravagance, or just something you doodled while talking to the patient. So, they just deny the prescription.
When you call them, they can tell that you exist, that you really care, and aren't drunk (at least not all the time) because you have dialed their number correctly and speak without a slur.
They think a while, then regretfully deny the prescription. Cost control, you know.
Finally, you can send a nice card (get well is good) and a small gift expressing a heartfelt sentiment. Then, they will probably approve the meds.
A greeting card. When you really need to show that you care.
basically the insurance company is f***king with you. The hoops you have to go through to get the medication approved by insurances.... from my personal experience, I went through 5 transfer calls and at the end, the person threatened me that she will disconnect because I was the intern...
Oh criminy. They are such morons. I have reason to know because I have the great misfortune to have them as my Rx insurers.
I am in Europe for 2-3 months at a time twice a year and what I have to go through to get my meds is unbelievable b/c their policy is no more than one "vacation override" per year.
When you see a skinny blond screaming into her cellphone at the pharmacy pickup window, please feel free to introduce yourself to me.
Post a Comment