I don't know if you are like me and my mother in law but we believe strongly that you should get what you paid for and that people should be required to do their job even if it is to the minimal definition of it. I write a lot of letters to people and companies. Are you that kind of person? I have received countless free things including but not limited to hotel upgrades, my money back, free refrigerators etc. What I would really like if for people to just do it right the first time and avoid the empty words we hear over and over again; "I'll get right on that," "I am going to bring this up in our next committee meeting," and my favorite, "this never happens (only to you just last week and the week before)" Anyhow, this is a copy of the letter I just sent to the CEO of a hospital I was applying to work at. You will see that I have never had the gift of political correctness. My best and worst quality is brutal honesty.I avoided using a sentence that states "crappy hospital administration" because I feel that that would be redundant. I doubt I will fix health care but would like there to be some little footnote in history as to why it is going to hell in a hand basket.
Dear Sir,
I am writing you today to inform you of my experience with credentialing
for a hospitalist position at Baptist Hospital. Late last year, Mr. P. approached me to see if I was interested in a locums position with the
hospitalist group. I had refused the offer two years earlier because the salary
offered was just a bit higher than what I had received as a moonlighting
resident fifteen years ago and was offered substantially more by your
competitor across the bridge but he told me that they were in need and my
desire to want to help a fellow physician outweighed my greed. I was sent a packet of forms which I
filled out and was called weeks later by a Mrs. S at medical staff informing me that I had missed
filling out a few sheets. When I received the thirteen page packet I compared
it to my copies of my original packet and they were not there. I tossed this up
to an error on my part and filled them out. I informed Santoria that on my CV
she would be unable to verify two employers since one had retired with no known
address and the other was now a defunct health care system in New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina. A week later she called me and told me that my letters of
reference were from doctors I had worked with over three years ago. I informed
her to review the letter I sent with my CV as well as our previous
conversations that explained my time between employments clearly stated that I
had not worked for three years since moving to Florida because I was raising my
newborn triplets and two older children at the moment. She then told me that I
needed to give her at least two local physicians that I knew as references. I
gave her the names of doctors I knew here and thought I was done with this
portion of the application process.
Over a
month and a half later, I receive an email from a Mrs P. in medical
staff with a list of documents still missing from my application packet. On the
list was two hospitals that needed verification, the defunct New Orleans health
care company, the retired physicians and the two Florida doctors letters of
recommendation that I knew were sent over a month earlier because they had sent
me a copy of the forms when they were sent out. When I explained this to Mrs.
P. she told me that these documents might have been sent to Mrs.
S but that she was unable to review her emails since she quit. She told
me that she had emailed, faxed and mailed requests to the above parties twice
and had not heard back from them. I innocently asked her if she had maybe
called them to see if the information was correct. By her pregnant pause I
could tell this concept was foreign to her. She then seriously asked me if I
could call the doctors and the hospitals myself, “being that I might have some
special pull” in order to get these documents.
While
making lunch for four of my children under the age of three, I worked my
special doctor magic which required a phone and an index finger and called both
hospitals and surprisingly, almost as if by a miracle, I was connected to said
departments and spoke directly with the women in charge of verification. On
both occasions I was told within seconds of my call that the first and second
documents were received and returned the same day. I then had to spend several
minutes catching up with these individuals so as not to sound rude but as I
mentioned I was cooking, cleaning up and changing four children under three as
I did Mrs. P’s job.
The following day , not having heard back from her, I had instead followed
up with her to make sure she received these documents because their delay would
cause me to miss my orientation which I had pulled several strings to line up two
babysitters weeks ago to attend. She informed me that the doctors’ references
were still missing. I knew they were sent because I had to make the
embarrassing phone call to these two men asking them to resend these documents
for me out of their busy schedules knowing that they had already taken time to
do this a month earlier. I don’t need to tell you how busy doctors are and how
useless paperwork slows down a day. The only thing busier than a doctor is a
doctor raising six kids doing someone medical staff job while car pooling her
kids to ballet and tennis. I asked
Mrs. P if her return information was on the sheet. She told me it was
clearly stated on the cover letter. When I spoke with the doctor’s office
manager I asked her to tell me what contact information was on the cover
letter. It was for Mrs. S who,
as I mentioned earlier, had quit. I then gave her Mrs. P’s
information.
You can
imagine my frustration when after all my work, Mrs. P calls me and
says that she has received the reference letters but that it seems I did not
work with these physicians and that I would need to send two new reference
letters out to doctors I worked with. Let me remind you that I had already
informed your offices twice that I had not worked in Florida since giving birth
to triplets. It was at this point I told her not to go any further because I
was done with the circus that is Baptist Medical Group credentialing. In her
dense thinking she had the audacity to call me back after this phone call to
tell me that after speaking with her supervisor I definitely would need those
two other reference letters or my
application would not be complete. I explained to her as slowly as I could that
when I said I was done I meant that I was done. Almost comically, she had the stones to ask me to write a
letter requesting to have my application withdrawn and I told her that I was
done doing her job and that she could type it up herself.
I write this letter hoping that you can realize that your system is
flawed. I have been a doctor long enough to know that in hospital
administration something like constructive advice is usually filed in your filing
cabinets located in the seventh level of hell and ignored but the mother in me
sees a teaching moment knowing this may well be the equivalent of showing my
infant his soiled diaper and then showing him the modern marvels of indoor
plumbing and its benefits only to be disappointed as he continues to crap his
pants.
Nonetheless, I would like you to know that Mr. P and Mrs. M were both professional, courteous and efficient in their dealings with
me. You may need to reprimand them or fire them for such behavior in your
present business model. Simply
stated, I barely wanted to work for you in the first place but there may
actually be physicians who want to be in your employ and your medical staff
office is their first impression of you. At the moment you have arrived for our
date in a wife beater, unkept and foul smelling with barely enough teeth in your mouth to chew
bread and asked me if I would mind going dutch. I think our date ends here.
Lastly, I would like to know where
to send my bill for all the work I
did for your medical staff office. I will of course be charging you the hourly
rate I receive as an employee of your competing hospital
Sincerely
yours,
Dr.
Sylvia
