Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jul
19
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“…We Emailed Your Doctor But She Hasn’t Gotten Back To Us.”
“Well, we emailed your doctor but she hasn’t gotten back to us.” L&D nurse to mother who had been in the hospital in labor for 18 hours and had yet to see a doctor.
There are 30 comments to this post.
Alyson Miers had this to say,
Jul 19, 2010 @ 6:02 pm (Quote)
“Okay! I guess that means Doc isn’t worried about me, so I’ll just walk around this nice airy room for a while and when Doc comes in, she can join me and Baby for tea!”
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beccaisadoula had this to say,
Jul 19, 2010 @ 6:20 pm (Quote)
No, he’ll come in just to catch the baby and bill you for the entire labor.
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sara Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 8:59 am (Quote)
yep- 15 minutes of work for him, 2800$ for “delivery”. Oh, and another 2800$ for the delivery room, also used for 15 minutes. *sigh* never doing that again…
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Heather Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 10:38 am (Quote)
That’s it? Around here, just for walking in and catching (all an OB does here that I’ve seen, after all the prenatal visits), it costs $10K. Then the other costs start adding on. It’s $25K for a cesarean, though.
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sara Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 10:44 am (Quote)
Yikes! There were a few minor other charges, but those were the major ones. They did take off the “labor” charge, beings as I wasn’t in labor in their hospital. It was only 111$ anyway. I used to think that my bill was really high until I saw other people’s!
The postpartum room was 871$ for one night. I really feel like I should have been in a resort to be paying that much. Massage, personal chef, the works.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 11:01 am (Quote)
My direct-entry CPM charges a flat fee of $2,000 for prenatal care (in the comfort of my own home), birth assistance and immediate postpartum followup (however long it may take), and postpartum visits (yes, multiple visits – in the comfort of my own home). Or is it $1500? I forget.
Anyway, what is the attraction of seeing a busy OB and birthing in a hospital again?
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decemberbaby Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 11:03 am (Quote)
Wow, we Canadians are spoiled. For my hospital birth we ended up paying $35 ($20 for a package with diapers, wipes, pads, a pen, awesome lidded water glass for me, etc, and then $10 for a phone in my room) plus $40 for three days’ parking. The home birth probably cost closer to $100 because of some of the supplies we needed to buy.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 11:55 am (Quote)
Ah. Here in America, the chief of medical policy is Milton Friedman, assisted by his head nurse, Ayn Rand.
I preferred being on NHS when I was in England, but if we are to keep a free market system, I’d be content to see something true to the spirit of Adam Smith. Consumers have more power in his version of the market.
Instead we have cartels like ACOG, and a small number of health insurance companies who set rates and determine coverage at will. That’s a sign of monopolies and trusts taking over the market, which Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand saw as healthy, but which would have Adam Smith spinning in his grave.
Sorry to get controversial, though; I’ll stop while I’m ahead.
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18 hours and no response? You’d think this would have triggered another try at contacting said doctor if they had no response by this point.
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Jane Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 3:45 pm (Quote)
In the culture of collusion, the nurses know the doctor won’t come unless the patient is in distress OR at 8cm. Therefore they cover for the doctor by not bothering to page or re-page the doctor. I’ve experienced this with other specialties, but basically if the nurses know the doctor isn’t going to respond, they don’t page the doctor because they know it’s futile.
There’s nothing in the average Patient’s Bill Of Rights which says you have the right to speak to your doctor, believe it or not. When my grandmother was hospitlaized, and my FIL, the doctors would make sure to come in before 5AM or after 10PM because they were sure that by this time, the patient’s daughter, son or spouse was gone. I suspect in at least one doctor’s case,the nurses only paged him after the support person left, because when the support person would return unexpectedly, surprise!, there’s the doctor.
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The Deranged Housewife had this to say,
Jul 19, 2010 @ 8:37 pm (Quote)
Hmm…something tells me that after that long, she was probably better off. The midwife asked me during my VBAC if I wanted my doctor to catch the baby and I promptly said, “Nope!” 
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geesh!
When I went with doctors I had three show up before the birth…out of six births. Two of mine were caught by ob nurses, and one was caught by the bed. Docs kept promising they’d be there, or that their partners could handle it and would be there. I finally went with a midwife. Funny, she only left my room to pee once very quickly and did call her husband when she came in to tell him she was staying. That’s it…she stayed by MY SIDE the whole time. She dried me off after my bath, she held a monitor on me while I stood and rocked next to the bed (there were decels and yes, the cord was being compressed as far as we can tell by an OP baby with an asynclitic head…but I was up and out of bed without an iv). I was not ordered around, I was served this last time. Wish I’d gone with a midwife before, yes she was a cnm, but she was a good one.
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Let’s see: we need to birth in a hospital because in case something goes wrong, we need to be seen by a doctor.
So you go into the hospital…and where’s your doctor?
Dawn, my experience with midwives was the same: once I was in active labor, they never left my side.
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The Deranged Housewife Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 4:53 am (Quote)
EXACTLY! OK, I’m here in case bad stuff happens. So where’s the guy who’s supposed to help me in case something bad happens??
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Jane Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 5:11 am (Quote)
They pulled the same garbage on me when my son was in the hospital and his doctor didn’t call me. They said they couldn’t page the doctor “because she has children.” I said, “I have children too.” They still refused. I should have PULLED MY KID out of that unit and transferred to another hospital because ostensibly the kid was there to be seen by a doctor if there was an emergency. If the doctor is “unreachable” by page for 18 hours a day, then this hospital is not staffed to handle emergencies and we need to leave it. Right?
BTW, I don’t believe the above doctor really was unreachable. She probably only answers emails and pages that say “Patient at 8cm.”
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch had this to say,
Jul 20, 2010 @ 10:57 am (Quote)
Pagers. They’re sooooooo twentieth century.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch had this to say,
Jul 20, 2010 @ 3:04 pm (Quote)
TOTAL non sequitur, but the banner ad at the top of this page reads – get this – “Breastfeeding:
Symptoms, causes, treatments of Breastfeeding.
myOptumHealth.com”
WHAT?!?
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Linda Germany had this to say,
Jul 20, 2010 @ 5:25 pm (Quote)
LOL! I wish I could have gotten rid of my doctor. All he did was stick his stubby little fingers in my whoooha and scare the bejeebus outta me. Oh, and ask if i wanted pain medicine.. especially an epidural, probably because he knew it would slow me down so he could pull out his ginsu knives on me..
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Add Your Comment.
Seriously… email?? Reba said it best.
“Well back in 1876 an old boy named Bell
Invented a contraption that we know so well
By the 1950′s, they’re in everybody’s home
It’s a crazy little thing they call the telephone
Now there’s one on every corner
In the back of every bar
You can get one in your briefcase, on a plane, or in your car”
So why haven’t I heard from you?!
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Jena Reply:
July 19th, 2010 at 4:57 pm Jena(Quote)
*Like*
Although nowadays with email being available on phones, some folks might be more apt to respond to the chime of an email alarm than the ring of the phone. But a doctor wouldn’t -avoid- either contact, now would he??
Was this at a Kaiser? I know they’re promoting their big “You can email your doctor!” thing these days.
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