I am a magnet for angry obese people.
Seriously. I cannot count how many times I was yelled at last week. Everyone tells me that I am grace under pressure, that it looks on the outside as though nothing bothers me. (Score one for Lexapro!)
The scene, Information Session. Again. A patient and his wife waited to speak with me after the presentation. They both looked pretty tired. It turned out that they live over two hours away. with traffic, I didn’t envy their commute.
“We have already been to one of these things,” said the wife, gesturing towards the podium. “I just want to know how much our insurance will cover.”
Not 10 minutes earlier, the presentation included information on insurance benefits for weight loss surgery. Since one size does not fit all, our insurance department has to verify benefits for each and every patient at info session. But there are a few hard and fast exceptions to this rule, three or four companies that we cannot work with. I looked at the patient’s insurance page. Sure enough - he had one of the policies. I broke the news in what I thought was a gentle manner.
Wife screeched, “Whaddaya mean? Dr. X’s office in Beach Town told me that you accept our insurance and that tonight was a formality! That this surgery is a sure thing! Why did they make us come all the way out here?!”
Remember, there’s no sure thing except death and taxes. Before you start this journey, get yourself a nice three-inch, three-ring binder. Trust me, you’ll need all that space. Don’t rely on what you hear from other people, especially when it comes to insurance. Double-check everything so you won’t be disappointed. If the patient’s wife had only called head of time, we could have spared her a lot of grief and mileage.
Apparently I need to keep a bottle of Scotch at work again.
