Excuses

"Well, officer, I was in a hurry to get home and start waxing it."

Why I call him that

Drug rep: "Hi, Dr. Pissy. Lunch today is from Dave's Deli."

Dr. Pissy: "Dave's Deli? Why? What did I ever do to you?"

Ooooh! Fireworks!

Yesterday Mary had to take her kids to an early dentist appointment, and wasn't able to get here until 10:00. Annie was stuck in traffic, so I took over the front desk since the first patient, a new one, was scheduled for 9:00.

The patient showed up at 9:30, WAY too late (in my opinion) to try and see a new patient. So I told her she'd have to reschedule. She wasn't happy about it, and asked to see a different doctor, or a PA or NP. I told her we don't have anyone else, and so she finally rescheduled to next Tuesday.

Later in the afternoon:

Mary: "Dr. Grumpy's office, this is Mary."

Mrs. 9:30: "Yeah, I had an appointment this morning, and had to reschedule it to next week."

Mary: "Yes?"

Mrs. 9:30: "I just want to complain. The male receptionist who was working this morning wouldn't let me see the doctor. I didn't like that at all."

Mary: "Male receptionist... Oh, that was..."

Mrs. 9:30: "I don't care what his name was. The doctor needs to know his staff is turning patients away. Even if they show up late, it's still inappropriate. My time is valuable."

(long pause)

Mary: "The doctor is aware of what happened."

Mrs. 9:30: "Good. Because I want to be sure to tell him about that guy at my appointment."

Mary: "You'll definitely have the opportunity."

Looking forward to Tuesday!

The joy of Dragon

Seen in a hospital note while on-call this past weekend:

And no, I have absolutely NFC what they meant to say.

Never a dull moment

On Friday we had an unusually exciting afternoon.

A sweet octogenarian waiting for her appointment suddenly developed chest pain and shortness of breath in the lobby.

Mary, knowing how good Pissy and I are at handling REAL medical emergencies, immediately called 911. I'd run over to the hospital for a minute, and so the staff got him to check her blood pressure and hold her hand until paramedics arrived.

By the time I returned paramedics were loading her onto a stretcher to go to ER.

She immediately grabbed my hand and said "Dr. Grumpy, I'm so glad to see you. Before I leave could you get me more samples of Nomohurtz? It seems to be helping."

In days of yore...

Thank you, Ms. Donna!

Sigh

Local hospital decided last week to re-paint the "Reserved Doctor" parking spaces in the front lot.

Mary's desk

Mrs. Damadian: "Hello?"

Mary: "Hi, Mrs. Damadian. This is Mary, at Dr. Grumpy's office."

Mrs. Damadian: "Yes?"

Mary: "We got your MRI report in - the doctor says it's fine - so I'm calling to make an appointment for you guys to discuss your treatment plan."

Mrs. Damadian: "How did he get it?"

Mary: "Well, he said it was fine, but..."

Mrs. Damadian: "I don't care what it showed. I want to know how he got the report."

Mary: "What do you mean?"

Mrs. Damadian: "Did a courier bring it? Or was it faxed to him? Or mailed? Or e-mailed? Or did a radiologist call him? Or did he look it up online?"

Mary: "I believe he looks them up, but it depends on..."

Mrs. Damadian: "This is stupid. I can't believe you don't know. Why don't you find out, then you can call me back and we'll discuss me making an appointment."

(hangs up)

Once upon a time

Wirth-Liss Phramaceuticals makes a hideously expensive drug that has to be administered once a month at the doctor's office. The patient co-pay on most plans is anywhere from $50 a month and up (granted, that's cheap compared to what the insurance company is paying for the rest).

So Wirth-Liss came up with a patient assistance program, where the patient gets $600/year covered by the insurance company, to help lessen the cost burden. Their idea was that this way more patients could afford the drug, so more doctors would order it. I can see the logic.

But the implementation left much to be desired.

Some company genius, with apparently no grasp of reality or human nature, decided the best way to do this was to send every person who qualified for the plan a prepaid credit card with $600 on it. The idea was that Mr. Patient would hand it to the doctor's staff at each visit, it would be swiped for $50 each time, and at the end of the year the card would be empty.

Unfortunately, it didn't occur to them to lock-out the accounts so that they could only be used at a doctor's office...

Basically, they sent patients pre-paid giftcards with $600 on them.

Of course, given human nature, most patients saw this as a windfall, and went on spending sprees. They bought groceries, beer, clothes, toys, a tank of gas, whatever.

Then, when it was time to go to the doctor, they didn't have any money left for the drug. So they opted not to receive it. So the drug wasn't given, and Wirth-Liss Pharmaceuticals, Inc. wasn't able to bill an insurance company for it. And, in fact, they now had a new corporate loss of $600 per irresponsible patient.

Of course, the patients thought this was grossly unfair. They couldn't understand why they couldn't have the drug, when, after all, they'd qualified for the assistance program. The fact that they'd blown their co-pay was beside the point. They also didn't see why they now had to pay cash for the co-pay, since the program person told them they wouldn't have to.

And, of course, they wanted another card.

When the above was explained to them, suddenly they remembered they'd never received the $600 drug card, or it had been stolen, or they hadn't seen it since an alien abduction on the way home from Las Vegas.

The program has since been replaced with one where the card can only be used at a specific doctor's office.

The executive behind it, I hope, has been canned.

The drug reps have the difficult job of explaining the program changes, and why they were made, to doctors and their staffs. Who are laughing hysterically.

Moon river

Dr. Grumpy: "How did the medicine I prescribed work?"

Mrs. Solanaceae: "I never tried it. I looked it up on the internet, and found out it can cause liver problems."

Dr. Grumpy: "Okay... but that's pretty rare."

Mrs. Solanaceae: "I don't care! It's my body, and I'm not going to take a pill that might harm it."

Dr. Grumpy: "You told me you smoke 2 packs a day."

Mrs. Solanaceae: "That's different. It's not a pill."

"Mavericks"? WTF?

Obviously, I'm bored tonight to even be taking a few minutes to type the following.


Apparently Apple is now switching randomly from feline names to beaches. I assume they ran out of cat subspecies.

I'm going to point out that there are still a LOT of felidae names to choose from:

Caracel

Smilodon

Margay

Geoffrey's Wild Cat

Serval

Colocolo

Norwegian Forest Cat

Ocelot

Kodkod


And many others.


NOT only that, but 10.3 was "Panther." Which is a genus. Not a species (okay, so was Smilodon, and they're extinct. But they were COOL).

And 10.1 (Puma) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) are the same damn animal (Mountain Lion, Cougar, Puma, are all the same creature). For the record, this particular animal has more known names than any other, with at least 40. "I'll take felidae trivia for $200, Alex."

All right. Enough procrastinating. I'm going to go see what Frank spent the day building on Minecraft.

That's why they call it a "blood gas"

Apparently, calling it "Arterial pH" used too many letters...

June 8, 1971

J. I. Rodale (1898-1971)

On this day in history... a man died (big surprise, huh?).

Like the late James Ferrozzo, it wasn't so much that he died, but how he left us. In death, as in life, style and timing are everything.

Jerome Rodale was an early proponent of healthier eating, and his legacy continues today. He was one of the first to support sustainable agriculture, and believed crops should be grown without pesticides. His publishing empire lives on today, with the magazine Prevention, which he founded, and more recent additions such as Men's Health, Women's Health, and Runner's World.

On this day in 1971 he appeared on the then-popular television talk show, The Dick Cavett Show. It aired late-night, but was taped earlier each day in front of a live studio audience.

Mr. Rodale (age 72) was the first guest interviewed, and happily went over his beliefs in living a healthier lifestyle. He promoted the benefits of organic farming, and expressed his optimism over its effects on himself. Things he said during the show included:


"I'm in such good health that I fell down a long flight of stairs yesterday and I laughed all the way."

"I've decided to live to be 100."

"I never felt better in my life!"

"I'm going to live to be 100, unless I'm run down by some sugar-crazed taxi driver."


After the interview, Mr. Rodale sat back in his chair as Dick Cavett brought the next guest onstage (New York Post writer Pete Hamill). As Cavett and Hamill chatted, Rodale made a loud snoring noise, and appeared to doze off in his chair. The audience thought he was pretending to be bored, and laughed.

According to witnesses, Cavett asked "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?" (Cavett to this day denies making that remark). Hamill looked at Rodale, then turned to Cavett and said "This looks bad."

Two production interns ran onstage and began doing CPR (unsuccessfully) on the healthy-lifestyle advocate as Cavett took the microphone and asked "Is there a doctor in the audience?"

Cavett, in a 2007 interview with the New York Times, said "I thought, 'Good God, I'm in charge here. What do I do?' Next thing I knew I was holding his wrist, thinking, I don't know anything about what a wrist is supposed to feel like."

Mr. Rodale was later found to have suffered a heart attack. The episode was never aired, with the network choosing to show a re-run in its scheduled place.

But is it artisanal?

Seen on a bowl of drug rep fruit:

Thank you, Karen!