"We'll See If She Wants to See You"

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Hi, welcome to "Things That Irk Me About the VA" (Part 1,376,407,238). Last week I detailed the funny-but-sat fiasco in trying to get something done about my arm and low back. Today I'm going for an MRI (yes, today, Super Bowl Sunday [the x-Ray department has to be open 24/7 because of the emergency room, so they made the appointment today instead of waiting until the end of February]) to get the ball rolling on that. Of course, that doesn't come easily. My primary doctor (not a specialist) will get the results, then determine the route to take from there. In an attempt to speed the process up just a little I called my clinic on Friday and talked to the nurse. Of course, I don't actually to my clinic anymore, I get an answering service. If the answering service thinks I should talk to the nurse, she'll put me through to the clinic nurse. Then the clinic nurse will listen to my issues and pass it on to the doctor. This is all predicated on whether or not the doctor wants to see me. That's right. I told the nurse about my back and the ER visit last Monday, and the answer I got was, "We'll see if she (my doctor) wants to see you." WHAT IN THE BLEEP IS WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE??? Their JOB is to see me. I'm not some doctor-hopping welfare cheat, I am a disabled veteran of the United States Navy.. She gets a check from the US government every two weeks to do the job of seeing disabled veterans. That is the sole reason she gets that check: to treat veterans. I will be at the hospital yet again on Tuesday for an appointment with the hand surgeon. The hospital director's office and the patient advocate's offices are conveniently located just down the hall from where my clinic appointment will be held. Even if they weren't conveniently located I'd go out of my way to find them and get this dealt with. When I call my "civilian" (private) doctor, I don't EVER get "We'll see if he wants to see you." No, I tell them what's wrong and the answer is, "We have an appointment at 1:00, 1:15, or 1:30, or you can come into the acute clinic at 2." What's the difference? MONEY. (Cue the Pink Floyd music. ) A VA doctor makes, on average, $204,000 a year. He/She makes that whether he/she sees one patient or one hundred patients in a day. In contrast, my "private" doctor only makes money by seeing patients. If his waiting room is empty, so's his wallet. It behooves him, therefore, to be personable (I tell people I have Marcus Welby for a doctor: when I saw him about a month after my mom [who was also a patient of his] died, he spent a half an hour doing NOTHING but talking to me about the physical and emotional trauma I would experience in the coming months over the loss of my mom and best friend!) and accessible. "He can't see you for two months" is going to make someone find a different doctor who can see you in under two months. That's how he pays his bills: seeing patients. VA doctors don't have to worry about any of that. Their staff is paid for by the government (it's not coming out of their paychecks), as are their office space (they aren't paying rent on the VA hospital or clinic), equipment (if the electronic blood pressure machine breaks down the VA orders a new one, not the doctor), and even insurance against malpractice (you technically can sue a VA doctor for malpractice, but you'd probably have an easier time getting an invitation to spend a night sleeping in Buckingham Palace, the Vatican, and the White House). All we ask is that they treat us with respect. Actually, right now I'd settle for them just treating me.