"You know, we generally recommend to our patients that they hand carry their dental records to us." the assistant on the other end of the phone line told me.
"I already have a full-time job" I fired back. "You folks get paid to make sure, among other things, that patients' records are transferred from one office to another and I expect you to do it."
She was very nice, she agreed to take care of it and, although I really wanted to explain my hard line attitude, she said that she understood.
The above exchange took place about 8 months or so after what was one of the most nightmarish episodes of my life that involved a sick person (me), doctors and an insurance system that let me get sicker and sicker because they wouldn't allow my doctor to do anything without authorization.
Sometime in February of 2007 I noticed a sore spot in my sternum. I figured it was probably a muscle-related issue since I had changed a flat tire a couple of days before and straining myself was a distinct possibility. However, a week or 2 went by and it didn't get any better so-off to the doctor.
Doctor number 1 tells me it's probably a muscle strain and to take ibuprofen for it. So I do. I take a lot of ibuprofen. In fact, I go on a 10 day trip with friends with a huge, huge bottle of ibuprofen packed in my suitcase and I'm probably popping around 10 pills a day.
Upon returning home I go to Doctor number 2 (doc number 1 was running a walkin clinic and I figured that with full insurance benefits I could do a little better than that). Doctor number 2 examines me and wants to run a CT-scan and take blood samples as well. Both these procedures, of course, require permission from the insurance carrier-ok fine, I understand. However, I am sent off site for both blood work and the CT scan-never mind that my doctor is headquartered in a leading university facility which has state of the art everything I still have to go somewhere else to get this work done.
This is the point where things start going very, very wrong. Neither the CT scan nor the bloodwork showed anything so I had to then go to a specialist-more permission from the insurance provider needed, oh boy...
Now, none of this would seem particularly horrible (inefficient, perhaps, but not really horrible) except that, the records of my x-rays and bloodwork don't reach my doctor unless I drive to one office, collect copies of the records and deliver them to the other office. Meanwhile, my condition is worsening on a daily basis and what was once a little sore spot in the middle of my chest has become a lump that is getting larger and larger.
Believe it or not, all of this dragged on for about 2 months with me going from doctor's office to doctor's office, picking up files, taking them another office, having more tests that revealed nothing and finally calling the insurance provider and telling them that if I died from this it was their fault (they clearly didn't want any of their clients reaching them because I was on hold for the better part of an hour before anyone took my call).
Eventually, an MRI biopsy revealed that the ever increasing bulge in my chest (by then it was visibly protruding from my clothing) was an abscess.
A FUCKING ABSCESS!!! Something that should have taken about a week or 2 to diagnose and treat but instead, because of bureaucratic bullshit, dragged on for 3 months-in which time I got sicker and sicker and at certain times was able to overhear the hospital staff speaking in hushed tones about my "tumor."
I truly believe that with single payer healthcare I would have been treated a lot faster than this, wouldn't have had to drive to hell and gone to make sure my medical records made it to the right places and wouldn't have spent the summer of 2007 wondering whether or not I was going to survive the year.
But the upshot of all of this was that, at some point during all that driving around I was compelled to do, I was doing someone else's job-multiple someone else's, in fact and I was determined never to let things get to this point again.
No healthcare system should ever require a patient to transport his or her records from one office to another and no person who is ill should ever have to experience what happened to me.