Virtual Cubicle

                                                                       vi. I called the surgeon’s office, our health insurance, and my husband’s primary care doctor.                                                                      vii. As of 11/18/2013, I have not received a letter or a call from Deb as of yet. As you can tell, this experience seemed to be a snowball effect of one blundering event after another. I shudder to think what would have happened had I not stayed the entire time to be the Patient Advocate.  However, what is most disturbing is that no one went over the medications to try to figure out why my husband was so sleepy.  He has never had seizures or been diagnosed with neuropathy.  I would have thought that someone should have asked why he was on Trileptal, but no one did.  They supposedly had his medical history in the EMR, however, I wonder who reviewed it because it is evident that those medicating him did not.  Because of this egregious error, my husband suffered needlessly when trying to recuperate from a major surgery by being denied pain medications because he was being given a medication that he had never been prescribed!  Furthermore, he had to suffer through the indignities through  the encounters of Fedorowicz, Becky, and Lila.  If my husband had not been given this medication, his pain would have been under control, he would not have had to stay one additional night, he would not have been overmedicated, and he would have made better progress while hospitalized.  I find this situation deplorable as well as a total debacle!  If this happened to a family member of yours, how would you feel about this situation?In the healthcare delivery system, there are three priorities in healthcare, cost, access, and quality of patient care.  In my opinion, these priorities were either loosely met or not met with regards to my husband’s services by your hospital.  If there had not been a medication error, my husband would have received a more cost-effective hospital stay with wise stewardship of both the hospital expenses as well as our out-of-pocket expenses.  My husband felt that access to care was potentially denied due to the collection techniques of your patient financial office.  As for quality of care, there was such a lack of it in this situation, however, I will avoid the redundancy of going back over it. Thank you for your consideration in this matter.  I would encourage you to review this experience and use it as an opportunity to improve the risk management strategies for patient safety as well as a review of your quality assurance program.  As for the individuals that caused my husband undue and needless stress, they should take this opportunity to evaluate their patient care methods and initiate change so another patient will not have to suffer the indignities my husband had to.  Our insurance has also launched an investigation regarding this experience and to determine if Porter should continue as an in-network facility.Sincerely