you are just the wife, not the doctor.

Today is one of those bad day at work. At least I have my trusty blog to vent it out.

I called a doctor's office to follow up on the report I faxed April 2. The woman who answered have nothing to offer but "I don't know". She asked me to call at 11:30 for someone who knows. So I did and this other woman who spoke with me does not seem to know any better also. She went to look at the chart and it was not there. So I asked if it is in there "in" box of faxed documents cause I have a fax confirmation that the fax went through. Then she asked me to hold and talk to their office manager. After waiting for several minutes, I got the office manager on the line. As I explained that I have a fax confirmation here that confirmed the fax went through, the office manager got defensive. "Are you insinuating..." she said. Well yeah, if the shoe fits I thought. She is obviously running an inefficient office. How else could a confirmed fax document not be there? Only if it was lost, misplaced or covered by piles of documents. Of course I did not say that to her. I did think it. So after some more discussion, I offered to refax the report. And I just did that.

Two hours later, I got a call from my director. The office manager called him. So I went to talk to my director. After he heard what I have to say, he was not upset at me nor did he reprimand me. He obviously see what really happened. He just advised me next time to be the bigger person and just refax the report. He told me that the office manager even went as far as "threaten" withdrawal of referrals from their office. Evidently, the office manager is the wife of the doctor. My director just sort of laugh off the situation and just reiterated his advise when dealing with difficult doctor or doctor's office.

All I can say this doctor's wife/office manage was having a major power trip. She is obviously a nobody that she used her husband's station to exert respect and authority. She hated what the situation brought on by my call says about the kind of office she runs that she took it out on me. What a looser! Of course I know that her threat was empty. Her husband has little choice but refer patients to our clinic. We accommodate most of their spanish speaking patients with spanish speaking staff that referral to other clinics will only lead to dissatisfaction from their patient. I don't think there are other clinics out there that speaks better spanish than us.