In case you haven’t noticed that the world doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to work, let me give you a small reminder.
I’m having a little balance issue lately, not a big deal except when I turn my head suddenly. So my doctor sends a referral to a local radiology outfit that does MRI tests. They’ll take a look at my brain. I wait a few days to schedule an appointment, and then on a recent Friday afternoon I make the phone call.
“I need an MRI,” I tell the woman who handles appointments. “My doctor sent the referral in about a week ago.”
The woman comes back to me after several minutes of searching around. She says there’s some mistake, they never got any referral from my doctor.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I tell her. “I’ll call my doctor’s office and find out the problem.”
But five minutes later, I get a text from the woman at the radiology office. Please call us, it says, as we found your doctor’s referral.
Or to quote her precisely: “Your provider has (in fact) ordered an imaging exam. Please call to schedule.” So I call right away.
“I don’t understand,” I tell her. “You just insisted you didn’t have it, and now you say you do have it. Which is it?”
They definitively have it, the woman assures me, and she apologizes for the confusion.
And so on that Friday afternoon, we make an appointment for the following Monday morning, 9 o’clock. I arrive several minutes early. I give them my name, and they tell me there’s been a mistake.
They say they never got my doctor’s referral.
I tell them about the confusion from the previous Friday, and the assurance that they did, in fact, have my doctor’s referral. And now they’re telling me that they don’t.
So they call my doctor’s office. Yes, my doctor’s office assures them, they sent the referral a week ago. And we’ll send it again right now so you can get on with that MRI.
Minutes later, a door opens and a woman ushers me in — apparently to start the MRI procedure.
But, no!
“Sorry about the confusion,” she says, “we don’t actually have the right machine here anyway. You need a 3T scanner. You need to go to another office, where they have the right machine.”
They can make an appointment for later this afternoon, at one of their other offices, if that’s all right.
It’s not all right, actually. It’s aggravating, and the whole process shows a lack of professionalism. If they can’t get the easy stuff right, how much confidence should I have in the technical stuff?
Anyway, later that day I head to the second office. I park my car, and I’m getting ready to walk in for my belated MRI. And I get a text on my phone, in capital letters.
“HI,” it says. “PLEASE CALL US ASAP AS WE NEED TO RESCHEDULE YOUR EXAM, AS YOU NEED TO BE SCANNED ON A 3T SCANNER AND YOU WERE NOT SCHEDULED CORRECTLY.
“PLEASE CALL US AT … ASAP TO GET RESCHEDULED ASAP.”
Are you kidding me?
So I call the number. I get a tape recording, of course. It tells me to listen carefully because their options have changed. I hang up the phone. I’ll go face-to-face. And I march into the office where they assured me — lo, these many assurances ago — that I would get my MRI today.
“Yes,” I’m told at the front desk, “our other office made a mistake in scheduling. It turns out we don’t have that machine available. Can we reschedule?”
No, we cannot. I give the two nice ladies at the front desk the full history of my frustration. Another lady, who might have been an office manager, emerges and apologizes profusely. They do have the right machine. And they will find a way to squeeze me in.
I appreciate the gesture. A few days later, when I get the results of the MRI, it says everything brain-wise is “normal.”
So, no big deal.
Except for this: if they can’t get the simple business of scheduling straight, how much confidence should I have that they got the complicated stuff straight?
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).
Jmore Publisher Scott Rifkin, M.D., reacts to President Donald Trump's latest poll numbers and the real force behind the growing decline of the Trump movement.
Last weekend's Flower Mart once again demonstrated that there's nothing to fear about downtown Baltimore, writes Michael Olesker.
A junior at Roland Park Country School, Katie Grossman writes about a recent experience that spurred her to take action to fight antisemitism.
At a time when many Jews fear appearing Jewish in public, seeing Judaism depicted correctly onscreen is reassuring, writes Jewish content creator Rabbi Yael Buechler.