The Simple Wealth

photo credit: lukeroberts

It has been about a month after Maiya’s fall, she still has bad dreams and cries at night, I wonder she dreams about her fall or her unpleasant experiences in the hospital? It took me a few weeks before I forgave myself for not making the right decisions for her. I wish I had not taken her to the emergency room so fast. I wish I had taken her home when the doctor told us that she had fractures on her skull but not bad and just needed to be observed. I wish I had stopped the nurse from doing IV to Maiya, when she took way too much time poking needle to find a vein. I wish I had insisted to bring her to Children’s Hospital ourselves instead of ambulance so that she did not need to be separate from me. I had to forgive myself for putting her through all this. I promise her that I will make better decisions for her if she ever needs to go there again.

I received a bill for the CT scans done in Children’s Hospital. It showed 1 CT abdomen for $789, and 1 CT pelvis for $789. I was surprised why two CT scans when the doctor only told us one? I made a few calls and was told that it’s a routine that a abdominal CT scan comes with a pelvis scan. A few days later came a statement for the ambulance charges with a total of $2727 dollars. That’s ridiculous. I called my insurance, Kaiser, and was told that I could file dispute about ambulance charges if I question the necessity of such service, but regarding the unnecessary CT scans done in Children’s Hospital I had to file dispute with them because it’s outside of Kaiser system. So I called the department of patient advocate at the Children’s Hospital, she did investigation and only came back to tell me what I knew already, the point of view of the doctor. That department should be renamed as doctor’s advocate. From this experience I have to advise you do not agree to transfer between different hospitals unless it’s really necessary.

For the greater good, I’m strongly against doctors demand unnecessary procedures. It costs patients and insurances money. Even if you have a very good insurance plan, and your insurance pays for everything, the money insurance pays will be transferred to everyone in general, the cost of insurance will be increased. I decide to file complaint with Kaiser for the following two issues:

1. There was no necessity for ambulance service.
The doctor at Kaiser ER arranged ambulance to transfer Maiya to Children’s Hospital just so that she could be observed, she was ok then, but just in case he wanted her to be observed. The statement I got for the ambulance service is $2349.09 plus $378. She was not in critical situation at all, was not wired to the electronic monitor for the time we were staying in Kaiser ER, she was only wired after the ambulance staff arrived. Why did the doctor arrange ambulance service? I did question him if we could bring her over there ourselves and he said “yes” and “but”. If you look at Maiya’s file, she actually didn’t need anything from the hospital, the next day after the neo surgeon looked at her scan, he sent us home and said that the bone will heal by itself.”

2.One of the doctors in the ER of Children’s Hospital demanded unnecessary abdominal CT scan.
After we got to the ER of Children’s hospital, one of the doctors touched Maiya and she cried, so the doctor demanded CT scan of her belly, even though we told her that Maiya’s belly was fine and she only got head injury and was just irritated by all these examinations, it was a long day for her. The doctor at Kaiser told me that Maiya did not need any more tests and he just wanted her to be observed in the intensive care unit, so why did she need to go through examining process again at the emergency room of Children’s Hospital? I’m not happy about this transfer at all, if the doctor thought Maiya needed to be watched by medical staff, why couldn’t she just stay at the emergency room of Kaiser? Maiya had two fractures on her skull but she did not have any sign of brain injury, physically she looked all right except the swollen on her head, the doctor in ER of Children’s Hospital had no solid reason to do CT scan on Maiya’s belly.

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Related Post:

•Six reasons not to rush your baby to emergency room

•Hospital bills from the incident of my baby’s fall