Why did I want to transfer care? Well for several reasons. The Centre for Rheumatology uses an online portal system devised by the minions of one Jamie Dimon and it is awful. Why is it awful? Well the Centre did not do the obvious thing to do, namely ti set up a pay system through our already existing portal accounts. They set up one which we had to go through a series of puzzles to finally get to a level and a point to pay them for services rendered. When the Centre did try to do what should have been done in the first place (setting up a pay system allowing us to pay through the portal—and remember the portal has all the necessary information so we don’t have to go through a series of puzzles to get to a point when we can pay—it messed up the accounts system and sent us bills for services we had already paid for. In response I threw up my hands and decided to go back to my GP to get a referral to rheumatology at Albany Med.
Actually, this was the second referral to rheumatology at Albany Med my GP sent to them. She initially referred me to rheumatology at Albany Med but Albany Med denied the referral claiming that my insurance denied coverage. This had to be a mistake since my insurance (Medicare and employment pension) did not deny me coverage at the Centre for Rheumatology which I got a referral to because I did not want to deal with the bureaucracy at Albany Med anymore given the incompetence (something inherent to bureaucracies since humans are inevitably involved in the processes related to them).
To make a long story even longer I was denied care for my fibromyalgia at Albany Med again but this time for a different reason than the insurance. Interestingly, I never received a call or a text message from Albany Med saying that that there was a message in my Albany Med portal saying that I was denied care for my infirmity. Given this I called to make an appointment for rheumatological care at Albany Med. The customer service operative I talked to told me that she had no referral so making an appointment was a no go.
So, thanks to the bureaucratic unmerry-go round I contacted my GP’s office again assuming that the referral did not go through for some reason. Another referral was sent. The person helping me informed me through all this informed me of another relevant bureaucratic puzzle level in Albany Med referral process. All referrals to Albany Med, I was told, have to go through a central referral office which takes a look at them and passes them on if they pass go in the game of health care cartel life.
Anyway, I thought I have better look in my Albany Med portal to see if there was anything there. And there it was. There was a document relating to the referral sitting there waiting for me to read it. And read it I did. The document said that I needed to print out said document and bring it with me.
There was a problem, however. I don’t have a printer. So, I called Albany Med was again. The person in rheumatology I was transferred to by Albany Med’s general customer service operative told me the referral had been denied. This time it had apparently been denied not for insurance reasons as before but it was denied because Albany Med’s rheumatology department does not treat patients with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia.
Why Albany Med could not have sent me a text message saying this or sent a message in my portal saying this instead of the download allowing me to avoid the download document prompt in the first place is beyond me. Well, on second thought, it is not beyond me. This is how bureaucracies, public or private, work. Computers and the internet have made it all worse. Their motto seems to be why save the “consumer” time and aggravation when you can have them go round and round in the unmerry-go-round that is bureaucracies?
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