By LOU ANTONELLI
Managing Editor
I’m 62 years old, and after such a long period I’ve had many bad days in my lifetime. But Monday was one of the worst.
Now, I can accept bad times somewhat better when it’s simply fate and bad luck that conspires against you. But rotten days are harder to swallow when they’re caused by people who are ignorant, incompetent, and won’t do their job.
Patricia has been going through some hard times with illness recently. It all stems from her suffering from acid reflux disease. A few months ago she had an attack so bad she developed asthma from aspirating acid, and was prescribed an inhaler.
At the start of last week she was having some symptoms which seem to be related to this ongoing problem. Wednesday she went to the doctor, who prescribed more inhalers and medicine.
Her recovery has been slow, and this Monday she was concerned she really wasn’t getting any better, so we called the doctor’s office again.
As you probably know, once a doctor has done all they think they can, if you continue to present symptoms, they will advise you to go to a hospital emergency room. Which we did.
Now the hospitals in Paris and Mount Pleasant are both closer, but since our health insurance is with the Christus/St. Michael’s system, we decided to go to that hospital in Texarkana.
Big mistake. Very big mistake.
Despite having health insurance and paying hundreds of dollars for a co-pay, we were treated like scum at Christus St. Michael’s. We arrived at 1 p.m. and finally walked away at 8 p.m. Patricia never got a report or a consult with a doctor. It was a waste of time and worse, a rip-off, because they took our money under false pretenses.
They claimed she would get treated, and she wasn’t. Worse than medical malpractice, they are guilty of business fraud.
Now, scam artists are used to being yelled at by people who they rip off, so while I did have some choice words for these fakers, it produced no reaction rather than a stony reptilian face of unconcern. However , I do have the unique satisfaction of getting my pound of flesh by lambasting these crooks in print, so here is a record of what they did, plus you can enjoy my invective.
The emergency room at Christus St. Micheals looked and sounds like the waiting room for hell. It is small and stuff with cheap seats. Its size only makes the groans and crying of its inhabitants reverberate all the more. Not all the crying is by children.
When we arrived, Patricia was taken to “triage”, and later sent to have x-rays, a cardiogram and blood drawn, so there was some work done. What it all meant, I have no idea, since we received no report.
By 5 p.m., after sitting in that anteroom of hell that’s the emergency waiting area all afternoon, we were ready to leave and try something else. I asked for a refund of our money, but they said once you see a doctor you don’t get a refund – and a doctor was present at triage.
Ah-hah, that’s how you run that flim-flam. Run people quickly into triage so you can legally justify ripping them off, they make them wait forever, and hope they go away.
Like we ultimately did.
The staff tried to justify their malfeasance by saying they were really busy. Well then, they need to stop checking people in if they can’t provide services.
At approximately 7 p.m. they called for Patricia. We hoped she would finally see a doctor, but instead they said – get this, now – that because her blood sample was over three hours old, they had to take another one.
At this point, I told them in some choice language that was caused by them making us wait all day. By the time I was done they called a security guard.
I shut up and they made all sort of false apologies and stupid justifications, and said she would be able to see a doctor soon. At 8 p.m. we gave up, walked out and drove home.
We learned a few lessons from this. First, it’s probably smarter to visit another health care provider and get a second opinion than to go to an emergency room.
Second, never, ever go to the Christus St. Michael’s emergency room. I had a positive opinion of the system because of our health insurance. Perhaps worse than being ripped off, I feel betrayed.
Patricia seems to be recovering after all. Maybe the shock of her mistreatment at the hands of the callous crooks at St. Michael’s had some positive effect.
I hope some day each of the uncaring, incompetent and inept people we dealt with Monday at Christus St. Michael’s is in the same position we were – sick, afraid and frustrated, staring at people doing to them what they did to us.
In the meantime, my only satisfaction is that they fell into the trap of picking on someone who buys his ink by the barrel and his paper by the ton.
