How Many Secretaries Does it Take to Solve the Medical Industry Conundrum?

This pretty much continues from this post and this post. It just gets better. So I called on Thursday afternoon to ask the plastic surgery people to send the x-ray upstairs to the dentist. It's up one floor. The lady said she'd call me back because she had to figure out if that was kosher and where it was. She did not call me back. I was clear about needing to know quickly. So today a couple of hours before our dentist appointment, I called to find out where our x-ray was. I got transferred to Marie because she would know. Marie was all, "why'd they transfer you to me? Charlene would know." I was on hold for many minutes. Charlene is nowhere to be found, they will call me back. They did not call me back.

I went to the plastic surgery desk before our appointment. Told the receptionist my problem. She paged Charlene. I sat down with Aleks. Waited. Receptionist didn't say anything to me. Smiled sarcastically. I asked if Charlene was going to find it or what. She recommended that I go ahead to the appointment and they would send it up when they could. I was willing to go behind the desk and find the damn thing myself, but didn't bother to offer.

Went to our appointment. Explained the situation with the x-ray a number of times as well as the need for the pre-authorization for the extraction. I was asked when the ear tube surgery was scheduled for several times as well only to tell them that it wasn't scheduled since I knew I had to coordinate it with them. I don't know why that's a hard thing to understand. I thought it made logical sense. Finally, yes, dentist will do surgery. Very nice gentleman. Knows our other dentist. Recommends I have other dentist send a copy of x-rays (which I called in this very afternoon). Walked me down to talk to the insurance lady about scheduling the surgery.

She did not seem like the brightest lady. Again asked when the ear tube surgery was scheduled for. Sigh. Told her the situation. She figured out what she needed to do, but did not know what to tell me about scheduling the surgery. Couldn't even tell me they'd call me or that they'd go ahead and schedule after the pre-authorization would come in. Seemed like this would not be so automatic and that I was going to have to take a lot of responsibility. I didn't want to wait to schedule and then have to remember to call everyone back in or to keep calling to see when the pre-auth came in, but they weren't really giving me a lot of information about what an easier thing to do would be. So I was left to solve the problem myself. The insurance lady didn't really help, so I left feeling sort of confused.

I walked about 15 feet to talk to the lady that schedules for our ENT. I knew where she sits, so that was good. And she was there! Which she never is. I told her the situation. I needed to schedule for these two procedures and I needed to make sure that she had set the process in motion for the ENT portion (though the surgery wasn't in the Aleks' online chart and she was told nothing of it - effing great) so when the authorization came in we were ready to go. She didn't really know what to do about that either though. Like, how would she know if the authorization came in? And if she did, that means we'd have wait until who knows when before scheduling the surgery and then who knows how long before their schedules would match up. So I suggested she schedule the surgery for the end of April/beginning of May and hopefully the authorization will have come in by then. She said she'd work on it tomorrow and took down my number.

Then, lucky me, while we were having a snack at au bon pain, I got a call from my friend who informed me that he had finally spoken to his mother and sadly, no, she will not do my taxes for my failed business for me. So we discussed the situation and its complications for awhile and that just made me feel more stressed out and nauseous. So I took appropriate steps to find a CPA. Hopefully that works out because I can't handle having to do my stupid taxes when I am this effing stressed about everything.

Monstrous medical corporations suck something awful and while things are handled (by me) as best as they can be, I am just annoyed and stressed to the gills with this crap. My stomach just knots - I hope this all goes through and that I don't have more that I have to do without having known about it or that suddenly becomes due. Ugh.