Does Dekalb’s Commitment to Customer Service Include Doctors?
For those with health insurance be glad, for the clinics of Metro Atlanta may be more than you can face.
A friend who has lost her insurance went to the North Dekalb Health Center for help. She was referred by Metro Counseling Services for assistance in getting psychiatric and medication assistance. She filled out the inventory, told them about her situation and warned them that she was very low on medication. For those of you unfamiliar with psychiatric problems, it’s not a good idea to go without your medicine or to try to self diagnose. A doctor’s help and guidance is vital.
The office staff took her seriously and asked her to return Monday after the weekend so she could be seen. The staff might get the seriousness of this, but the Doctor on duty didn’t. After she waited an hour and a half, the doctor on duty told her that she was not welcome and that he would not see her. When she asked if anyone canceled, he acknowleged that a person had canceled but that her lack of medicine and the dire consequences she has been suffering “were not my damn problem”, but her own and that she would have to make a formal appointment and come back.
She left shaken, angry, insulted, and scared. So should the rest of us. It’s one thing to be busy. It’s another thing to be rude and to not care about your patient and the public safety. CEO Vernon Jones has stressed customer service among his employees and has mandated training for them. Apparently that did not apply to the doctors. Moreover, this doctor is letting someone who has serious psychological problems lapse in her ability to get medication (she’s willing to pay for it, BTW, but a prescription is rightly needed here). Common sense says that’s bad practice.
Even if today was an amazingly busy day, simple decency tells one that the doctor should have asked how many days of medication she had left. Then he should have found a day to make the necessary assessments prior to her running out. Instead, he threw her back on the street after the staff of the office had recommended that she come in. Where is the concern for the patient? Where is the concern for the public as the doctor now is aware she’s almost out of medication and will be among Dekalb Country residents without it? We, as tax payers, have the right to expect more.
The question is what the county is prepared to do? There will always be public service and customer service mistakes. People get it wrong and blow their tops. However, this is a pretty serious glitch and if the county is smart, it will address it. The county needs to assure that the requisite facilities, resources, and training exists to make sure that citizens who come in for services are well treated. No one should be treated with diffidence by a county employee and when the person needs assistance to keep them and others safe, a priority flag ought go up.
There are another separate set of issues here too. First is that medical care is lacking for those without insurance and we need a way to make access to the system better. Both market and government solutions can be part of the picture. Second, it also says something about the mindset of some of Atlanta’s doctors. Namely, that they have dissociated themselves from the actual needs of their patients. They are not problem solvers who want to help folks, but rather are proceduralists who believe that their job is to perform a task and get paid for it.
Of course there are really patient oriented doctors in town, Dekalb County just needs to get them into medical centers and give them the needed resources so that everyone gets first rate attentive care.