I've been trying to schedule an MRI all week without success. And I don't mean that I have been trying to get the actual MRI this week, just to get it scheduled. Why is another story, but right now, I need to vent. I went to Stanford for an initial appointment and they said I'd have to get an urgent MRI done. I wanted to get it done at a nearby location instead of going all the way back up to Stanford. I thought it'd make it easier, and expedite things. What a joke on me that has turned out to be.
To start things off, Stanford tells me I have to call the local facility and schedule it, and that they'll get insurance authorization. I do. The local facility says no, they don't do the authorization, Stanford does. So I call Stanford back and they say they'll do it but they need all this detail about the local facility. Phone nbrs, contacts, address, stuff like that. So I call the local facility, get all that info, call Stanford and leave the details on a voicemail. I do the same the next day. I hear nothing. So a couple of days later I call and they say they didn't get all the info, even though I left it all. So I give it to them yet again. They in turn fax the paperwork to the local facility. I then have to contact the local facility to schedule an appointment. Of course during all this, I have a real job, things to do at home, and only a set of hours in a day that I can also get this scheduled. So a couple days later I finally do call the local facility. The person there first says they can't find my paperwork. Had I not pressed they'd have stopped there. THEN they tell me it's not authorized and needs authorization. Wasn't that the whole point of this exercise in the first place? So I then call Stanford, and they tell me that they did contact insurance, authorization is not required because that facility is within their coverage, and there should be no issue. The person at the facility should know that.
Oh, BTW, remember that this whole thing has been an "URGENT" request for an MRI.
Why the HELL am I supposed to be the middle man here? Wouldn't a great deal more have been accomplished by Stanford talking directly to the local facility? Ultimately that's what they did do, conveying the fact that no approval is required, but the dolt I talked to was as clueless about the approval as they were about finding my paperwork.
I ended up throwing my arms up in disgust and discouragement. I hate this crap. I need to walk away from this for awhile. This is arcane and idiotic. What's the point of trying? Why should it take this much intervention and pursuit to schedule a frickin' "URGENT" MRI to begin with?
Where's the "care" in "healthcare", anyway?
