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'Same Day' Service Proves Both Late and Lengthy
From Susan Parker (09-23-03) Originally posted at: http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=09-23-03&storyID=17447 Berkeley Daily Planet Edition Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 'Same
Day' Service Proves Both Late and Lengthy
Last
week I got a "same-day" appointment at Kaiser.
On
Monday I saw a doctor who told me to cover my affliction with "warm
compresses and not to touch it."
Unable
to move from the couch I vowed that if things weren't better
by Sunday night I'd make another appointment.
I
drove to Kaiser in North Oakland. I went through security and stood
in the brightly lit waiting room. There was
I
went to the registration desk, but no one was behind the glass
partition.
Across the room I saw an electric sign.
"One:"
it said, "Check in with the Desk Technician. Two: The Triage
Nurse will call you. Three:
I reread the sign. This
was remarkable news. I'd never been to the emergency room when
the wait to see a doctor was less than two hours. Sometimes it took
longer.
I looked at my watch. So far I'd been there 10 minutes. There was still
no desk
"Fifty
dollars, please," said the person who was now sitting behind
the glass. The last time I had been to ER the
At
3:10 a.m. the triage nurse was seeing a new patient. When she
wasfinished
I approached her. "The sign says that
"What sign?" she asked. "The sign on the wall over there," I pointed. "I've been on vacation," she shrugged. "I don't know anything about it, but I'll find out for you." Then she asked me to step aside so that she could take care of another patient. I
went back to my seat. The triage nurse helped three more people. She
had obviously forgotten my request.
"What sign?" she asked. "The one over there that says I should tell someone if I haven't seen a doctor within 30 minutes." She
squinted at the sign and read it as the words flipped by. "That
sign is wrong," she said. "Why don't you ask
"I did," I answered. "But she's busy and besides the sign says to ask a staff person. You're a staff person, aren't you?" The
woman stared at me. "Yes," she said. "I believe the sign was written
that way because we're having problems
"That's
not what the sign says," I answered. I looked at my watch. "It's
been almost an hour since I registered.
"Yes," she said. "I'll see if I can get you a bed." I
knew what that meant. It meant that she was going to find a room to
put me away in. It didn't necessarily mean
To
make a long story short, another hour went by and I finally saw a
doctor. He took care of my problem.
So
here's my message to Kaiser: Change the sign to read "If you don't
see a doctor within THREE HOURS
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