Un-fucking-believable

Excuse my un-fucking-lady-like language, but I'm still in shock over my recent personal experience with the health system at Hopkins. As mentioned, I've been sick. (I'm all better, now, thank you. Just hacking up some remaining phlegm. Mmmm). So, on Friday, after my last two midterms, I decided to go to the student health clinic to make sure I didn't have a bacterial infection, and if I did, to get some drugs. After walking to the outskirts of the Hopkins Medical campus, way far away from the hospital and School of Public Health, I found the clinic tucked away in a weird strip-mall like setting. I went in and told the woman at the front desk that I was sick. I was feverish, coughing, soar throat, etc. She asked if I had an appointment. "Nope. Just a walk-in." After not being able to find my insurance information in the computer, and making several phone calls to make sure I actually was on the Hopkins plan, she told me that there was no one there who could see me, that they were about to go on lunch, but I could make an appointment for Tuesday to see my assigned primary care doctor. "Let me get this straight: I'm sick, I'm in a clinic, I'm the only patient here, and there's no one who can see me, and I'm at Johns Hopkins, the '#1 hospital in the U.S?'" "Right. You can make an appointment for Tuesday or go to the Emergency Room." After further statements of disbelief, I left and hoofed it back to the School of Public Health, getting angrier and angrier with each sweat-, fever-, and cough-inducing step. Up the street, they were teaching me about the problems with access to health care, how it's a waste of resources to go to the E.R. when it's not an emergency, but how so many people do because they can't get to regular doctors... and the student health clinic at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute is sending me to E.R? Are you kidding me?!!!

Delirious from anger and fever, I went to the student affairs office to find out if there was anywhere in between the clinic and the E.R. where I could go to see a doctor and get a prescription, if necessary. Then, I went on a similar feverish rant as above about the school's hypocrisy of teaching one thing, but doing the exact opposite. The coordinator of my department was there and took pity on me (or maybe it was fear). She called the clinic again, which told her the same thing: Tuesday or E.R. Then the coordinator walked me to the E.R. to find out how long the wait was going to be. I was reluctant to go, was ready to give up and go home, take some Tylenol PM and get under the covers, but she was insistent and ridiculously kind.

It turned out there was only one person in front of me at the E.R. ("Good thing you didn't get sick on a Friday night, otherwise, there'd be a much longer wait due to the imminent gunshot victims." Awesome.) Even with only one person in front on me, there was a three hour wait. It turned out there were many more people in front on me, just further down the bureaucratic line in other unseen waiting rooms. Finally, after three hours, I saw one of the nicest doctors I've ever encountered, especially in an emergency room. He examined me, he listened to me, he sat and explained to me everything that could be wrong, what I could do and what to expected, and when I told him I was a student at the School of Public Health, put things in an epidemiologic perspective. It made me realize why the hospital is ranked #1. But seriously, actually getting to that doctor was short of a nightmare and there was no reason for me to go to the E.R.

I'm on a mission to bring this to the attention of the higher-ups at the school of public health. Do they even realize their health clinic is sending people to the emergency room? The whole experience was completely absurd. I later found out there's a clinic that would have seen me at the main campus, a shuttle-ride away. But not at the medical campus? What?! This needs to be fixed. Stay tuned for my adventures in attempting to change the system.