Nice People

[geminigirl]

Almost everyone who has an HMO for health insurance (myself included) complains a lot about it. And certainly not without reason, most of the time, HMOs make health care difficult. Once in a while, there's an exception.

I'm still doing physical therapy for the karate injury from earlier this summer. I had scheduled an appointment for this week, and one for next week. I thought this week's appointment was today, but when I called to cancel it, discovered it had been yesterday. I had done this through the call center, so I hadn't actually spoken to the receptionist at the physical therapy department. I discovered today that I missed the appointment, and figured I'd make apologies next week when I went.

I just recieved a phone call, from the receptionist at the physical therapy department. She knew I'd had my tonsils out last week. She called today to check and see how I was doing, since I'd missed my appointment. Not to chew me out because I'd missed without calling, but just to check in and see how I was feeling.

Not what I expect, but certainly it brightened my day.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I had Kaiser HMO for a long time, and I found that the quality varied a lot by vacation. I had excellent doctors and competent care in one town, tedious doctors and half-assed care in another.

[geminigirl]

I wouldn't say my care from Kaiser has been substandard, but it has been challenging to get answers, or services sometimes. I'll be glad when they're not my HMO anymore, but I'm sure things could have been far worse.

But this was someone going out of her way, above and beyond anything necessary just to check in and be nice. And that impresses me.