Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
May
14
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“We’ll Need To Do A Pregnancy Test…”
“We’ll need to do a pregnancy test, have you missed a period?”- OB nurse when a mother transfered care into the practice at 7 months with an obvious belly and having already provided her medical records for the pregnancy from her previous health care provider.
There are 46 comments to this post.
Kim Wilson had this to say,
May 14, 2012 @ 4:38 am (Quote)
LOL When I was having my fourth child (third home birth) I had to go see a care provider to verify my pregnancy for the birth certificate information. Since I’m a really bad procrastinator (and an uber long gestator) I was 43 weeks pregnant when I finally went to the Crisis Pregnancy Clinic to get the form signed. They made me watch a video about abortion before they would sign the form.
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Kate @ Modern Alternative Mama Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 5:05 am (Quote)
…seriously? I can’t believe they would MAKE any woman watch a video about abortion. “Make.” REALLY. So a woman goes in and says “I think I’m pregnant, if I am I want to keep it” and they say “We know you are in an emotionally fragile place right now, so after we get your pregnancy test, you’ll need to watch a video about abortion.” WHAT? That is just mind-boggling. I get it if she says “I might want an abortion” or “I don’t know what to do” but…just, wow.
And in your case, NO COMMON SENSE. A woman at 43 weeks both cannot and obviously does not WANT to have an abortion! Insane.
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Kristi Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 7:59 am (Quote)
Yeah, they did the same thing to me. Lied and said they did ultrasounds, too, which is why I went there in the first place. Ended up in tears, clutching my baby belly. I’m not against abortion in any way, it’s just not something I would do, personally, and I TOLD THEM THAT!
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Tee Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 8:01 am (Quote)
I agree, that is downright disgusting! Nobody should be forced to watch that video!
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JoAnna Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 2:55 pm (Quote)
Well, she *wasn’t* forced. She watched it as a condition of getting verification of her pregnancy. (A tactic I don’t agree with, btw, but private organizations are within their rights to make such conditions.) It’s not like they strapped her to the chair and duct-taped her eyes open.
Kim Wilson, are you comfortable sharing which clinic you went to?
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Mandi Reply:
May 15th, 2012 at 7:23 pm (Quote)
At the same time, in many states, women who are choosing abortions are forced to watch videos about parenting and see ultrasounds, and there is a 48 hour waiting period on an abortion and you’re sent home with all kinds of pamphlets about parenting and adoption.
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I guess I have to bow to Sarah since my first response was put your hand right here and wait to be kicked. But hey if the nurse has no hands? I know, maybe she could put her ear to mom belly and listen and get kicked!
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Kate @ Modern Alternative Mama had this to say,
May 14, 2012 @ 5:07 am (Quote)
“This belly is just from eating ice cream. But in case it’s not, why don’t you go get that doppler over there and use that instead of a pregnancy test?”
All kinds of stupid. I’m guessing this was from sheer arrogance, like this office’s tests are somehow magical? They can’t accept the word of any other providers? ARGH.
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Ashley had this to say,
May 14, 2012 @ 5:10 am (Quote)
I understand why they may want to do this after reading stories like this. http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=7361148 about a women that they performed a c section on who turned out to be suffering from a pseudopregnancy. Given the press that this recieved at the time, I would personally want to cover my bases just to be sure as well.
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Lisa Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 5:47 am (Quote)
But the submission said she had transferred the records “for the pregnancy” to this office…meaning the pregnancy had already been confirmed by the previous provider, to my mind.
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Details Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 6:44 am (Quote)
And this nurse couldn’t have covered her bases with a heartbeat? In regard to the woman in the mistaken c-section 1) had come in on a Tuesday and been section on a Friday 2) pseudopregnancy can manifest with a postive pregnancy test and swollen abdoman 3) apparently in that case they thought the baby had died and that was why they couldn’t find a heartbeat. Maybe the problem is the doctors (nurse in this case) are too busy reading headlines and not going for the details. I don’t pay doctors to only read the headline and then start jumping to conclusions. I pay them to think. When thinking is in short supply, when professionals are afraid of everything, when CYA is not just their first response, but their only response, it is time to look for a new provider. Of course this mom could have burst out laughing and this nurse could have realised her mistake and this would just be a funny and memorial moment. I hope the OP didn’t have to go find a 3rd care provider!
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adrienne Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 7:51 am (Quote)
I thought your body tests positive for hcg during pseudo pregnancies though.. I could be wrong, but at any rate, taking 3 seconds to find a heart beat would make sense either way.
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Ashley Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 9:34 am (Quote)
I absolutely agree that there may be better ways to confirm a pregnancy at that stage. However, I generally validate everything I do for my job on my own. I generally do my own testing/evaluation to ensure that what is being reported to me is correct. I don’t think we would have this site if every doctor did everything correctly the way that they were suppose to, nor can the staff assume just based on appearance.
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Details Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 12:18 pm (Quote)
“I generally validate everything I do for my job on my own.”
And where do you send the bill for that? I’m guessing that your validation of whatever you do only costs you the 20-25 cents refered to below and you aren’t sending a bill to anybody’s insurance. I could be wrong I guess, but my first bet is that you aren’t dealing with a human being with informed consent and a wallet to watch over. My guess is that whatever it costs you to repeat whatever tests you do is coming out of your budget.
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Jane Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 12:52 pm (Quote)
So you’re saying that if you walked into a doctor’s office with results from an ultrasound that showed a healthy singleton pregnancy at 20 weeks, you’d be just fine with the doctor saying, “Well, we need to charge you $20 to perform a pregnancy test to make sure you’re really pregnant”?
And does the doctor then repeat all the OTHER tests that were done, just because? The STD testing, the GD testing, an amnio if one was already performed…?
It just seems like there’s too much CYA here. A doctor should be able to safely assume that another obstetrician who confirmed a pregnancy and cared for a pregnant mother for seven months is competent enough to diagnose pregnancy.
BTW, if the mom shows up at the hospital in active labor, do we now expect the on-call OB to order a pregnancy test just because the covering OB is from a different practice than the patient’s OB? Where does it end?
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Details Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 2:07 pm (Quote)
And don’t forget this was from the mouth of a nurse who also wanted to know IF she had missed a period. There is no point in ANYBODY defending this level of autopilot. Double check a few tests like feeling for a baby and reading the U/S yourself in a case where 2-3 day of induction has resulted in nothing carving a woman up sure espcieally if you’ve left the interns in charge for far too long. But the OP’s situation Not reasonable! and jumping from the OP’s situation to the mistaken c-section example isn’t reasonable either. This kind of flying off the handle is just unacceptable!
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Mamaspud had this to say,
May 14, 2012 @ 6:06 am (Quote)
My father, a journalist, has a saying in the newspaper business.
“Never assume a woman is pregnant unless you can actually SEE the baby coming from her body.”
I know it said the mom had her records, but some people will go to extreme lengths to convince others and themselves that they are pregnant. Office is just trying to cover their butt. The WIC office was going to make me take a test when I was 39 weeks, if I wanted to sign up for the medical card.
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Drives me nuts that I can take an HPT at home and they do a pregnancy test even after I tell them not to. They just do it automatically with the first pee test. And then they charge that copay. I can find pregnancy tests for $1, I don’t need to retake them. I know women fake it, but I am not one of those women and hate to be treated like I could be. At least I’m not obviously pregnant when they do it.
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C.Pratt Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 9:15 pm (Quote)
And even if you (anyone) were the kind of person to fake it, what would be the risk to the doctor/practice? In pregnancy they are exceedingly cautious about prescribing anything, so there shouldn’t be any risk there. And they should be palpating and taking a doppler at each appointment at the very least, so even if someone were to fake it would come out pretty quick. So how exactly does questioning prior records help anything at all? And how often does that even happen, I mean really… psych case, not as common as some would believe.
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Kristy Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 9:56 pm (Quote)
What… don’t you watch TV?? It happens aaaaall the time on the medical shows. 
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C.Pratt Reply:
May 15th, 2012 at 3:56 pm (Quote)
Sure, it can happen. Sorry, I guess my point kindof got muddled up there, I was pretty distracted. What I was really trying to ask is ‘what is the risk to the provider if the patient is faking pregnancy’? I can’t think of any risks, can you? They are so cautious in treating pregnant women anyway, what is the point of even questioning if the mom is faking or the prior OB misdiagnosed something so easily verified? It’s just stupid offensive to everyone, you know?
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Kristy Reply:
May 15th, 2012 at 5:46 pm (Quote)
No worries! lol… My sarcasm got muddled a bit too it seems. I mean… I’m sure it happens but if the bizarre conditions we see on medical shows happened as often as we see them on medical shows then the docs wouldn’t take so long to figure things out.
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I wouldn’t have anywhere near as much of a problem with them needing to verify the pregnancy if it hadn’t been said in such “Oh gee, we think maybe you might be pregnant, what do you think, any signs of possible pregnancy?” way. A simple “I know this is kind of silly but policy states we have to verify the pregnancy with a urine sample” would have sufficed just fine.
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Jenny Islander had this to say,
May 14, 2012 @ 9:16 am (Quote)
Our practice is your only hope of having a healthy baby because everyone knows that only OBs have the magic that guarantees a healthy baby and healthy mom. But their practice is all kinds of dumb and fake and uneducated because they are not us.
I will bet you fifty dollars right now that if the OBs at the two practices didn’t go to the same school, they at least went to schools accredited by the same organization.
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TyMc had this to say,
May 14, 2012 @ 9:45 am (Quote)
I sprained my ankle during my second pregnancy. i went to the ER, and they said “any chance you could be pregnant?” i said “possibly” so they asked when my last period was, and i said “26 weeks and 4 days ago” lol! they were shocked! its less obvious with me though cuz i didnt start showing with either pregnancy until i was about 33 weeks along.
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Carolyn had this to say,
May 14, 2012 @ 10:27 am (Quote)
This is just about money. The tests cost them maybe 20 cents each, then they bill the insurance or the patient without insurance about $20 each. When you hear that they have a policy of retesting every new patient, you can be sure that they will nickel and dime you in every possible way. The reason they don’t just listen to the baby is because that falls under exam, which the mother already is being billed for.
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Toni Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 12:44 pm (Quote)
One more reason to love the midwifery practice I’m seeing. Yes, they deliver at the large teaching facility, but when I switched providers (at 12 weeks) they took my records at face value – I did not repeat the pregnancy test, the pap, or any of the blood work. I never had to take my bottoms off until the 36w GBS test (and I probably could have opted out of that, but I prefer to know). I’m now 39w and have not been examined since; though I likely will request a membrane sweep at 40 w – I tend to go two weeks over, lol, and yes, they are ok with that too They even changed my due date (giving me 5 “extra” days) based on second trimester u/s, even tho the one based on LMP was technically within the margin of error. I’ll probably be making some thoughtful thursday submissions here in a few weeks
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I am not debating the stupidity of wanting a urine pregnancy test for the OP. I just wanted to comment on the posters complaining of the cost of a pregnancy test at a hospital/clinic. The reason it is so expensive is that the salaries of lab techs, nurses, secretaries, housekeeping, electric bill, water bill, heating bill, etc all have to be paid somehow. That is done by increasing the cost of everything, such as a pregnancy test. Just like if you go to any store, the price you pay is not what the company paid for it – the markup is to pay for salaries, utilities, etc. I don’t agree with doing unnecessary tests just to increase profit, though.
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Foleygirl24 Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 5:22 pm (Quote)
That’s also why medical bills from a Level I trauma center or a big university teaching hospital will always be much higher than a smaller hospital- they have more overhead and are required to have many specialists on-hand 24/7.
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Don’t be mean. I think it is very brave and equality-minded of that practice to employ a blind nurse with no hands.
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Elizabeth Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 4:42 am Elizabeth(Quote)
I’m so glad I wasn’t eating or drinking when reading this comment!
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Jenny Reply:
May 14th, 2012 at 3:39 pm Jenny(Quote)
There goes my tea!
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