Before you go to a Convenient Care Clinic you may be interested in my story. This may not apply to everyone as I am retired, on Medicare/Medicaid and am on a fairly fixed income so DOLLARS are a factor in the story and the second factor is simply TIME.
A small amount of background: Minot is a small city of 50,000 and we only have one hospital, Trinity Health. We had two but that is another story (of trickery) about Trinity Health.
A little more background about my blog post title. I have liked every employee, doctor, and administrator I have met from Trinity Health including the hospital President. The horrible only applies to my experience with policy.
The situation: While walking to the front door of the church for Sunday worship both feet slipped out from under me. I landed HARD on my left shoulder. People came running to help me and I knew I had damage from the fall. I opted to sit through the worship service as opposed to going to the emergency room. I decided to go to the convenient care clinic on Monday.
Enter Dr. Christina Cabrera, my angel of mercy. She examined me, sent me to x-ray, and had me come back to her immediately after. Nothing was broken but it appeared that my bicep had detached. Unfortunately this is not new to me as it happened to my other arm 20 years ago. She prescribed a muscle relaxer to help with the swelling and pain. Policy kept her from prescribing a pain killer as Trinity's policy is I would have to get that from my primary care Dr. Dr. Mattern. I love Dr. Mattern as she has been our kind and caring family Dr. for 20 years now.
Time and money!
Here is the rub. Both Dr's. work for Trinity Health. I was hoping to save time by going to the convenient care clinic being Dr. Mattern is usually booked 3 months out. I was trying to save money by limiting my number of Dr. visits. Dr. Cabrera knew what was wrong and she knew how much pain I was in so I assumed (you all know what that means, ass-u-me) she could prescribe the appropriate pain killers for my injury. WRONG! Dr. Mattern had to do that which meant no less than two more Dr. visits and most likely an MRI. Ka-ching!!!
Dr. Cabrera sent a note to Dr. Mattern suggesting a pain killer to help me deal with the pain and I also called Dr. Mattern three times asking for her or her nurse to call me back. It wasn't until the 3rd call until I gt ANY response and the response was exactly what I was hoping to avoid... you have to come in for an examination.
I was already examined by a Trinity Health Dr (Dr. Cabrera) but that was not good enough for Trinity Health???
WHAT!!! Because Dr. Cabrera works in Trinity Health's convenient care clinic she is somehow less credible then my primary care Dr.?
Lesson learned... go to another hospitals clinic in town in the future that doesn't have STUPID policies.
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