“Fun” day at MrsT’s doc’s appointment day before yesterday.
She has a common congenital heart defect, a hole in her heart. It was the cause of her stroke 11 years ago.
At that time, the insurance-approved coverage was to treat with blood thinners first, and only do surgery to close the hole if blood thinners weren’t effective.
Back then, the blood thinner of choice was warfarin/coumadin, very cheap, but since then, it’s fallen out of favor, replaced by new meds like Eliquis…very expensive.
All of a sudden, insurance is now happy to approve the surgery…usually. Hmmmm…
So we met with her cardiologist’s partner about closing up that hole and getting her off blood thinners, and he agreed she was a good candidate for it, wrote everything up, and sent us back out to the clinic’s registration/check-out desk for the details.
First, we had to schedule the appointment. He does these only on Fridays. She went over her calendar and found the first Friday she’s available is 22 March. Great, scheduled.
“Ok, so you’ll need blood work done ahead of time, here’s a standing order, any time within 10 days of the procedure.”
Fine, she can work that in.
“He also wants a new echo done on your heart, let’s get that scheduled.”
She called the echo people…waiting…on hold…waiting…”They can do it this day.”
“I’m out of down from the 23rd-7th.”
“Hmmmm…,” waiting…waiting…on hold…waiting…finally, they found an agreeable day. Sorted.
“You’ll also see a pre-surgery physical, let’s get that set up.”
Same haggling, and everything is a mess because of her work schedule, her trip out of town, or the four other doc appointments she already has.
That gets scheduled, as well as a follow-up after the surgery. Are we done?
Not quite: “You’ll also need sign-off from your neurologist. Who’s that?”
“Dr. Sherman, but I haven’t seen him in 11 years, and he moved away anyway.”
“Ok, we’ll use our usual one.”
Called over…waiting…waiting…on hold…waiting…
Once they finally answered, they asked, “Has she seen a neurologist before?”
“Yes, 11 years ago, but he’s gone now.”
“Well, we don’t accept patients who’ve seen a neurologist before. Sorry!”
What commenced was calling around to various other neurologists’ offices, until they finally found one who’d agree to see her, but they wouldn’t set up an appointment at that time…their scheduling department will call her “sometime in the next two weeks.”
So that’s where we are. It took maybe 20 minutes to get her vitals checked, talk to the surgeon, and a whopping 75 minutes to get through the check-out, and we won’t find out if insurance approves it until the last step, meaning if they say no, we’ll still be on the hook for paying for all those other pre-op appointments!
