Starting at around the end of last year, our medical care situation became quite eventful. First, Fifi's old pediatrician, Dr. Mas, who was very nice and quite patient, left Osler Medical Group, and so Fifi was transferred under the care of Dr. Altenburg. Not long after her transfer, I went to Shanghai on business, and Fifi promptly came down with a fever - her first such fever since she was born. Fortunately, Cherry was able to nurse her back to health in a few days.
Later on in the year, to save money on insurance premiums, I elected to switch our medical insurance plan to the Blue Cross/Blue Shield PPO Plus plan, which has a $50/monthly premium. However, since we regularly meet the requirements for my company's wellness program, I receive a $50 credit each month, effectively negating the premium. It sports a high deductible, but also features a maximum out of pocket cost that basically works out to the same total out of pocket maximum costs that a high premium/no deductible HMO would have if you "maxed out" the HMO plan any given year. This plan is actually outstanding for young single people or young
couples that might only see the doctor once or twice a year at the most, because you could effectively get away with zero health insurance costs on the year if you only went in for wellness checks. However, with young children, the costs can be much more unpredictable, and the network is a little confusing as well, as we would find out.
A few weeks back, Fifi came down with her second case of high fever - this time, it was worse than last time as her temperature reached up to 105 degrees! We visited Dr. Altenburg who directed us to have some STAT blood work done (STAT basically means as soon as possible) at the outpatient lab in Viera Hospital. When we arrived at Viera Hospital and attempted to register, we soon learned that they were not in our network! Actually, as I would later learn, the hospital itself (E.R., maternity ward, etc.) were part of the network - only the outpatient lab itself was an odd exception...
We were subsequently advised to go to Qwest Diagnostics to get the work done, but they closed in just a few minutes so we rambled on down the road to try to make it in time. And, make it in time we did... only to find out that Qwest Diagnostics could not satisfy the doctor's orders for STAT test results (we would have to wait at least a day to get the results). So, we were re-directed once again, this time to Wuesthoff Hospital, where after quite a bit of struggling, we were able to extract two small blood samples from Fifi for the testing.
Fortunately, the tests showed negative for anything bacterial, indicating that her illness was likely a result of a virus, and over the course of a few days alternating between ibuprofen and acetaminophen, her temperature and good spirits returned to normal. Unfortunately, her blood count showed a low platelet count, which we were told may have been a result of the method by which the blood was drawn (through her finger rather than the butterfly tube), and her urine test showed a little bit of blood. As a result, Dr. Altenburg, through her receptionist Tiffany, recommended that we re-take the tests after Fifi recovered from her illness. However, since Fifi was still in recovery mode (she had developed some red hives on her body when her fever had subsided), and because we were under the assumption that the abnormal results were due to the method of test, we informed Tiffany that we did not want to re-take the tests at this time. Apparently, this is considered "non-compliance" in the world of medical care, as a few days later, we received a letter in the mail informing us that Fifi was hereby discharged from Dr. Altenburg's practice for not following the recommendations, which precluded her from being able to determine if the abnormal results were due to something more serious such as leukemia or kidney issues! Had we been informed of these risks, we would have been more receptive to the re-test.
After a few angry phone calls, we ended up rescheduling and retaking her blood and urine tests (the second time was much easier because, for the blood test, I held her down instead of Cherry, and for the urine sample, we brought her potty along with us and so she knew she was supposed to pee). The lab technician told me to call the doctor at about noon for the results. By 2PM, we still had no results, so I called again and finally was able to get results for the blood test. Somehow, the urine test results did not get faxed with the blood test results, so I had to call the lab to get them to fax it again, but by then, the doctor's office was closed, so in the end we had to wait till the next day to finally get the results. I don't quite understand the double standard - we couldn't use Qwest because we needed to provide the results right away... but we can't get results right away when we want them...
In the end, fortunately, everything turned out fine - but I'm not looking forward to the bill!
