Off Topic: Health Care Customer Service? LOL.

The cable company has a terrible reputation for customer service, and I should know, I work for one.  They keep people on hold, they hang up in the middle of calls, they tell people they're getting one package and the installer shows up to put in another.  They sell people phone service they don't need, Internet speeds they won't use, and when you aren't happy with them, they don't care.  For the most part, cable is a monopoly.  If you need home entertainment, you get it from them.

"What the hell does any of this have to do with health care?", one might ask.

They don't care either.

In some ways, its actually worse.  When you have problems with your service, you can call the cable company and sometimes get a resolution over the phone.  I just came from two practices where I made a call and got completely ignored.  One for 4 days at 3 calls per day, and the other for an entire day (because I wasn't letting the 4 day thing happen again) until I went into the office to get the prescription the doctor said he'd call in the previous day.

I had to sit there like a protester in front of the capitol building, and the whole time I did it, the office staff was looking at me like I was the biggest asshole on the face of the earth.  At one point during a phone call, I was told that a message had been sent to the doctor about the prescription and that "it was his option" to call it in.  Never mind he already said he was going to do it and decided not to, but 24 hours later, the staff was trying to convince me that it was ok for the doctor to call it in "if he felt like it".

The problem I have with all of this is that this isn't my cable, it isn't my Internet, and while more important to some people, it isn't my telephone.  It's the health and well-being for myself, my wife, and my two kids.  If someone called the cable company and requested their telephone service be fixed, they are legally bound by FCC rules and regulations to be out there fixing the problem within 24 hours.  Meanwhile a doctor can hold onto lab work for weeks at a time and "get around to it" whenever.  This actually happened to a friend of mine recently.

It's time to put a stop to this kind of nonsense.  Why do doctors care less about my health than the FCC cares about my landline telephone service?  Don't let them get away with it anymore.  Sit in that office, let the front desk staff talk shit about you in the background, and don't leave until you get what they promised your level of care would be.

Let me know what kind of crap your health care provider has pulled in the comments section.

P.S.  On my last visit, they tried having me sign a waiver that I received a copy of the office privacy policy without actually giving me one, and when I requested it, they had to dig through stuff they hadn't seen in years to get one.  Turn them in for that nonsense while you're at it.