I Have a Surgery Date!

 I actually saw the hand surgeon!! We did arrive an hour early, as I had predicted. I saw the surgeon for a good 5 minutes of the appointment. The surgery is scheduled for May 5th.

The hospital will call with my time the night before. But here is the crazy part. I have to see the surgeon for my pre-op visit April 29. That was a little annoying since I live so far away .... and no, 8am will not work for me. But the hospital has to see me for a pre-op and plan to do a full cardiac work-up before the surgery.

I have a cardiologist and just had an extensive work-up and do not see the necessity of this. When I had my oral surgery, my cardiologist approved it and that was fine with that surgeon. Can't be because it is in a different state, all my doctors are in Georgia. My oral surgeon is in Tennessee ....

I am quite certain that Medicare will be charged for each visit. With the oral surgeon he included all the office visits in the cost of the surgery. I had to pay for that one myself. It almost seems like they want to get as many charges as they can from this surgery. This is why our medical bills are so high!

Working in the ER gives a distinct view of doctors who would milk the establishment. I was aware of several doctors whose practice consisted of mostly Medicare/Medicaid patients. When calling the doctors on behalf of a patient in the ER, they would always admit those patients. Symptoms did not matter, could have been just a headache. Given the age of those patients, you could always find something going on with their health. So many patients admitted without needing that level of care.

Then there were the doctors practicing in the town I lived in when I began my nursing career. Brothers, they opened a practice and welcomed Medicare and Medicaid patients, along with patients suffering with opioid addictions. I worked day hours back then, so I rarely had to deal with the patients of the Brother Docs.

It wasn't long before the brothers came under scrutiny on several counts. Seems they wrote too many scripts for opioids. This was in the 70's, long before opioids were the issue they are today, so you can imagine that they wrote a tremendous number of scripts. That scrutiny brought the attention of the people in the Medicare/Medicaid fraud department.

I had the twins and was out of the working scene for a while and never worked at that hospital again. Didn't make sense to work with two infants, a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old. But I did read the newspaper and saw that the Fraudulent Brothers had been found guilty.

That was a long time ago.