Ben Franklin

Yep, I’m thinking of old Ben today, he was pretty wise, a couple of his quotes that come to mind are:

Time is money

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

I’d like to bill Wyandotte Henry Ford Hospital for my time.  They had a system that worked very well and then they had to change to the Epic System a new Henry Ford Health System program, which the end result was only a waste of time for me this morning.

Our simple blood draw which should have taken about 10 minutes under the old system took 50 minutes this morning, all because of their system upgrade. The process is no longer streamlined, point A check-in, point B go to registration (with a long wait to get there),and point C go to out-patient testing. They added point B for every week. Even though we were registered in the new system last week, we had to go to registration again this week. We had to wait for all those before us (who were never in the new system to be added, which is a much longer process than for the person who is in the system), only to see a registration clerk who needed to pull up Austin’s record and click one button so we could have our blood drawn. They did apologize for the wait, I did ask to talk to a supervisor only to note that this new system isn’t working. I did apologize to the registration clerk, noting that I know it isn’t her fault but management needs to understand how this new system is impacting their consumers (customers). 

Management blamed it on the fact that they had to re-register all the individuals for out-patient tests in the new system.  Really, with today’s technology someone couldn’t have figured out a way to transfer that information over? If you can’t and if you know you’re going to have to do a lot of new registrations during this period, you know it’s going to take longer, how about staffing for it?

I want to be able to walk in, check-in, and have it noted I’m in the system that I’m already registered and go directly from point A (check-in) to point C (out-patient lab work), I don’t need to wait 45 minutes for someone to click one little button. I want it to be as streamlined as it was two weeks ago before the system upgrade (which should be called a downgrade).

Really, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out, just look at your lobby, the number of people waiting and then look at the out-patient testing area where there was never more than one person in the waiting area, and they were probably there waiting for someone to complete their test, someone that they took in for testing.

I’m seriously thinking of changing the later of the two quotes: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes, and if something works well don’t worry someone will make it inefficient."

Since I’m a glutton for punishment when I did get home I decided to start our taxes, I just keep telling myself happy thoughts, happy thoughts! 

Austin, who has often struggled with waits, transitions and changes once again amazed me, he managed well.  I think he had his eye on the prize at the end, I promised him breakfast.

By the time I navigated through our taxes our results were in.

Hemoglobin is now 11.9(up from 11 last week) and I think it’s a good thing that Platelet count is finally under 700 (but that may not mean much since I’m not a trained medical professional I don't know, it was so high above normal I just think a drop is good). White blood count is back in the normal range which I also interpret as a good sign.  

It will be nice not to have to go downtown to the chemo room this week. We follow up with the doctor next Monday (I might just skip the Wyandotte Hospital blood draw since I know we’ve got to go downtown anyway, my own kind of streamline). Hopefully, I’ll have a better picture of what the future (short and long-term, when it comes to Austin’s medical needs) will look after this doctors visit.  I'll be pleasantly surprised if we have those answers, just my reality lately. 

In the meantime, I’ve got to stick to Austin’s playbook, today is today, and it is a good day (now that I’m not waiting J).

Capt. America was in the house last Thursday, last treatment, he was blowing me kisses.