I just called trying to get an appointment for Shanna. She yanks on her ears enough that I have a very small amount of concern about an ear infection. Not a huge concern, but enough that I’m willing to go have her checked out as a basic preventative thing. So I called for an appointment. I was first told that I can’t have a well child check up if I think there is maybe anything wrong with her, I have to have a sick baby visit. When I told her I didn’t really think the baby was sick she got snippy and said, “Well what is it you want?” I said I wanted an appointment with a doctor. Then she told me to call Dr. x (my primary doctor)’s office and talk to them about what kind of visit to schedule. I told her I would like to see a different doctor and she asked me why. I told her I didn’t like the way Dr. x interacted with my daughter on the first visit and I would like to see a pediatrician. She told me to go online and browse profiles of doctors and call back and see if I can get an appointment with the one I select. Uhm, I’m going to be changing insurance plans soon so I don’t feel a need to spend a bunch of time searching for the “right” doctor, can I have an appointment with anyone who has an opening in the next day or so? She told me that I should just go to urgent care then. Goodbye and have a nice day.
WTF! Bitch!
You have every right to be flaming pissed off.
Ugh…how unfortunate!
*sigh*
I’ve had nothing but good interactions with the Camino Medical Group people….
I’m going back to Kaiser. I’ve had fantastic luck with Kaiser for most of my life.
I hate PAMF. They frequently behave as though they are doing you a favor by allowing you the privilege of giving them your business. The people who answer phones follow scripts, as you saw, and won’t do anything helpful. For something like what happened to you, I once complained to the director. I did get a response, but no lasting change in their procedures. The only way I have ever made progress is by calling the nurse who works with my daughter’s doctor.
I can’t recommend a pediatrician–my info is long out of date :-). The PAMF on El Camino in Mountain View, just south of 85, seems to be much better than the PA location (Fremont sounds similar). They were acquired sometime in the last several years, and seem to have a different environment. They also have an incredible, huge glass sculpture in the lobby that makes me like the place for no rational reason. It’s a drive for you, but if you have to stick with PAMF and you can’t stand the Fremont people, it’s a possibility.
I’m going back to Kaiser. Fuck this shit.
That’s the one I go to…. I love my doctor and her staff.. but yea I’ve heard weird things about the other ones….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw6DFFpxt6M
That made me happy.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see the problem here. Health care is set up as a system, and in order to get it you have to work along the procedures that have been set up within that system. You had a baby with a symptom of illness; whether the exact semantics of that were a “sick baby,” you nevertheless wanted her to be looked at for an ear infection: that’s a sick-baby visit. (If you felt strongly about it, you could have emphasized that it was a non-urgent sick baby visit.) They’re set up for you to ask for a doctor by name; the appointment-maker probably doesn’t have an algorithm set up in her system for “next available appointment except for Dr. X,” particularly for a well-baby appointment — would it have killed you to spend two minutes online picking a doc’s name, at random if necessary?
My guess is that, having been a longtime Kaiser patient, you were using a system that works at Kaiser, but that doesn’t work with your new provider. You’re highly intelligent and I feel pretty sure that you’re able to work out the system at the new provider if you want to, especially if you work collaboratively instead of adversarially (“I’m sorry, I’ve been with Kaiser all my life, and they let me simply ask for the next available appointment; if you guys don’t do that, maybe you could recommend a pediatrician?”)
When the Dudes were little, they had a very elderly pediatrician who worked in a solo practice, and who I could call directly and ask about something like a baby pulling on his ears (btw, she probably does have a mild infection; that’s pretty classic). Health care just doesn’t work that way any more — it’s a big business now, and if your insurance won’t cover the dwindling number of solo practitioners, you have to work the system the way it wants to be worked.
obMomHint: If it’s not out of line with your solids-introduction plans, get her used to yogurt now — it’ll save you a lot of awfulness later, when the antibiotics for the ear infection knock out her intestinal flora and you have to change a zillion runny diapers a day.
Actually, I’m not with Kaiser I’m with Sutter West and if you call for a same day appointment and they can’t schedule you with your primary doctor then they put you with the “on call” doctor. Actually, that’s how I came to switch to my current doctor – I loved my old doc, but I’d seen Dr. Pham a few times on a “same day” basis and really liked her. She and I clicked in a way that I didn’t with my former doctor (who I love as a person, but he’s chronically late) so I switched at open enrollment.
Personally I don’t LIKE Kaiser and won’t go there, but I don’t think I’ve ever been to a medical group that couldn’t take a same day appointment with SOME doctor, provided you called during their regular business hours.
Well, yes… but that’s for a sick baby. If you insist that your baby isn’t sick, you probably won’t get a same-day appointment; those are for babies who need immediate attention.
I actually wouldn’t have had a problem with the next day. I wasn’t worried enough to need a same day appointment.
You’ve not lived in the East Bay wiht non-Kaiser insurance. The only way to be seen by a doctor *today* is to show up in ER. Tomorrow, they could do sometimes, but never today. It may be better now that all the medical groups have consolidated, but being on Kaiser will keep me out of Alta Bates, which is worthwhile.
The problem here isn’t that health care is a system. The problem is that when I said, “Can you do ‘x'” she got really snotty and basically hung up on me. If she had said, “I’m sorry, my system is set up so that I don’t have the information to do that for you.” I would have been fine.
rambling tangential thoughts from debs
Agree with both, but more with you. Yes, system, but No, never an excuse for rude customer service. Did she hang up on you? That’s what it sounded like. I’ll tell you basically though, it makes me think of working in Australia. People Just. Don’t. Care. (Did you read my rant to my ceo?) I found it appalling, and was glad to live in Silicon Valley Workaholics. Now I am just sad that (by the sound of things) it prevalent in another company as well. But… the culture of a company really is top down, y’know. Like on my ships, we had great captains who cared, and it filtered down, we knew our efforts were Noticed, and Appreciated, and when we were slack, people Noticed and Said Something. But when the leader advocates, I dunno, family values and evangelical religion, you get those 20 year old girls going up to my friend and sighing, You’re so lucky because you’re MARRIED. wt… so I am hoping hoping hoping for eight years of modern sanity and education and values of making a contribution etc.
um…. sorry that was a tangent.
And I’m still looking for photos. Weekend.
*hugsbabe*
From what I have read, it is best to not introduce cow dairy in the first year.
All the different information out there on avoiding food allergies is kind of intimidatingly vast and conflicting though.
Yes — when I was weaning the Dudes, with their family history of food allergies (their dad had very severe allergies as a child), I avoided cow’s milk for the first year too. Toward the very end I introduced a bit of evaporated milk, which apparently is less likely to trigger allergies. But I wasn’t sure what you were doing, and if yogurt might fit into it.
Once they could have yogurt, though, the whole ear-infection thing got a lot easier. I’m sure the meds have improved, but at that time, ampicillin tasted so nasty that the only way I could get it into them was to mix it with the strongest-flavored thing I had available — grape juice. The resultant diapers were unspeakable.
In general we don’t have food allergies in my family or Noah’s, but pretty much everyone (but me–yay!) has dairy issues. I’m being more cautious than is probably necessary in food introduction but I figure that being more cautious won’t cause any problems and the opposite could so… *shrug*
FWIW, our pediatrician back then had us start solids with yellow veggies, which are apparently the least likely of all foods to trigger allergies. Squash and pumpkin were a bit of a push, but almost all babies seem to like the sweetness of pureed carrots — and they’re easy enough to fix if you’re not using prepared baby foods.
http://www.kellymom.com/nutrition/solids/first-foods.html#order is a strong source for what I am doing food wise. Kellymom is a fairly well respected and well researched source of a variety of information.
What I’m pretty much doing is: avocado/banana/yam and occasional gnawing on broccoli before 9 months. At 9 months we’ll start with some whole grains and other non-allergenic fruits and veggies. She says that dairy products other than milk aren’t a problem at 9 months, but I’ve seen enough conflicting information on that one that I am more comfortable waiting till 12 months on dairy.
All of this is very difficult to prove one way or another what is “best” and I don’t believe that what I am doing is the One True Way it’s just what I feel most comfortable with.
There is a whole other list of stuff I’m delaying until 18 months. I’m really thrilled she is so into breastmilk. 🙂