HealthCare Whisperer: Cancer Has My Friend

HealthcareWhisperer

Back to Main Page
Quick Search

Search only in titles: Keyword:

Search in:

Date Range:

Advanced Search

Basic Search
May 2012

Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31
Syndicate
Monthly Archives
Category Archives
Recent Posts
1. Nursing Home: Hospital Discharge Planning:Financial
  Monday, June 28, 2010
2. The Limits of Thinking Like a Doctor
  Tuesday, June 22, 2010
3. Nursing Home: Hospital Discharge Planning Part 2
  Monday, June 21, 2010
4. Nursing Home: Hospital Discharge Planning Part 1
  Wednesday, June 16, 2010
5. Becoming an Empowered Caregiver: Getting what you need from the facilty
  Monday, June 14, 2010
6. Nursing Home/Assisted Living: The Event
  Thursday, June 10, 2010
7. The Nursing Home/Assisted Living Saga: Part 1
  Monday, June 07, 2010
8. The Point of it all
  Friday, June 04, 2010
9. A Tribute and Thank You for Those in Service
  Monday, May 31, 2010
10. The Penalty for not Having Insurance Exists NOW!
  Thursday, May 27, 2010
Recent Comments
1. Stav on Nursing Home: Hospital Discharge Planning Part 2
  6/30/2010
2. Illinois insurance courses on Know the Insurance Lingo
  5/11/2010
3. HealthCare Whisperer on Need Help: An undiagnosed neurological disease
  3/17/2010
4. Maija Haavisto on Need Help: An undiagnosed neurological disease
  3/17/2010
5. Jason Gaya on Healthcare Navigation Tip#2: Insurance
  2/18/2010
6. Lari on Chronic Pain Client Part TWO
  1/12/2010
7. JanetWise on What happened to Lillian Wald's dream for the VNS?
  1/10/2010
8. Marc Seltzer on Healthcare Reform: The Insurance Stimulus Package
  12/21/2009
9. NPs Save Lives on Nurse Practitioner VS AMA
  12/13/2009
10. MARYEVE BASKERVILLE on Nurse Practitioners in Healthcare Reform
  12/11/2009
Subscribe

Blog Post
Tag Cloud
advocacy advocate assisted living cost doctor doctors health care navigation health reform healthcare healthcare reform HIPAA HIPPA hospital hospitals insurance law medical medical records medicare Obama

HealthCare Whisperer: Cancer Has My Friend

Cancer Has My Friend

Yesterday, I found out a colleague, client and friend has thyroid cancer. This cancer treatment has a very good success rate except her cancer has metastasized to the lymph. Still an excellent prognosis. What has me fuming in the background is it took five months to get a diagnosis. I haven't said a thing to her and I won't. I know it took this long because I found the lump and sent her immediately to her primary who got her in for an immediate ultrasound. For some reason, the doctors went back and forth with doing a biopsy or not. In the end, it was cancer.

I know it just doesn't have to take that long to get results.

A typical scenario is a biopsy is done and the person is told it will take a certain amount of days. The results are sent to the doctor. Hopefully the doctor actually gets them in a timely manner, reads the results and either calls or has the client come in for an appointment. This can take up to 10 days of waiting, stressing and praying. As a patient advocate, I am on the phone with the lab asking, Did you send the results and if you did when? I call daily. Then I call the doctor's office, did she/he read the results? I immediately make an appointment with the front desk for that day or early the next day. I have been known to trim the wait time to half or more. I am not implying that doctors don't care about client's feelings or purposely take their time. Most do care but are so busy and overwhelmed. It is not easy to deliver bad news. The current system is bogged down and unresponsive to the consumer. Part of healthcare reform has to be a way for consumers to be involved in their care. The results belong to the consumer and impact their life not the doctors or hospitals. Five months is too long to have a cancer growing and not have a definitive answer or plan. I just don't let the system dictate the information to me. I make sure my clients get it in a timely manner.