Sh!ma

another reason why the hospitals in Toronto suck

So the never ending saga of my dad’s health lead to an MRI at Toronto Western Hospital which was suppose to happen this last Sunday. But because of the storm we had to cancel the appointment (Which was done eventually, with some minor glitches.. read: rude help desk lady and the fact the Imaging Centre never calling me back to confirm they had cancelled the appointment, even though I explicitly asked them to do that in my voice mail).

So Anyhow, I called on Monday to rebook the appointment for this Friday. When I spoke to the booking lady I told her my dad had a valve in his heart and asked if that would create any problems with the MRI. She said that probably not, but to be safe I should have his cardiologist fax over information about his valve over. So my brother had my dad’s cardiologist fax over the information to the hospital. My dad and I met up today at the hospital for his MRI. After he spoke to the attending nurse, they said that they weren’t sure if he could have his MRI because of his valve. I told them that his cardiologist had faxed over the information over a few days back. Turns out all the faxes sent to any Toronto University Health Network goes to one central location and they are suppose to fax anything they get to the appropriate people. Except, as always seems to be the case someone FUCKED up royally. The MRI department never got a fax and so they couldn’t go on with the procedure. (The central location had lost the original fax and couldn’t locate it!)

We got sent home after wasting two hours at the hospital. I feel like even when we try to pick up the hospital’s slack they still know how to mess up. I’m slowly losing my trust in the health care system.

The moral of the story: Get a copy of the patients medical files. You probably can do a better job locating the correct files then the hospital admin people.