WordWielding: TRUE TALES FROM A QUARTER CENTURY OF MEDICAL OFFICE MANAGEMENT

TRUE TALES FROM A QUARTER CENTURY OF MEDICAL OFFICE MANAGEMENT

I have been a medical office manager since 1981 with the same

group of OB/Gyn’s. One physician left in the early nineties,

another early in this century. There is only one physician

left. He and I are in a contest to see who can outlast who.

I will occasionally post anecdotes, but in no particular

order.

~~~~~

Something Wicked This Way Comes circa 1988

As frequently happens, the nurses have warned the receptionists that

a horror is approaching from the west hallway. I have been summoned

to check out the patient. The receptionists are so undone by what the

nurses have described, they’ve fled to the chart room where they can

watch from a comfortable distance. I, of course, know that what the

nurses have passed along can only be a silly prank.

Unfortunately, it isn’t.

The patient appears at the check-out window. She is wearing dangly,

multi-hooped earrings. Trapped between two of the hoops is an honest-

to-God, live cockroach. It’s creepy little legs are going crazy as it searches

for purchase. The patient is mulling over dates for her return appointment

as I stare unblinkingly, openmouthed, speechless, at the bizarre trapeze

act taking place an inch below her left earlobe.

The cockroach is so close to her cheek! Can’t she feel the air current from

the trapped insects crazed efforts to escape it’s captivity? Is it perhaps

a pet? The patient is dressed normally, not in a Morticia Adams or Vampira

costume. Does she know? Should I ask her or should I tell her?

The physician who saw the patient and was the first to notice the multi-

legged hitchhiker hanging from his patient’s earlobe makes a slow pass by

the window unseen by the patient, giving me a shit-eating grin. He is so

pleased to see me squirming: I am terrified of insects and everyone knows

it. A moment later, he buzzes me on the intercom.

“You need to tell her,” he insists. “She’s pregnant…it might startle her and…”

I hang up on him. I can hear him laughing from the other end of the long

hallway.