HIPAA Critical, Part IV

It has already happened twice at our house, and it still caught me off guard this week. No, not one of our teenagers saying, “I’m full.” Don’t be silly. That never happens. I’m talking about medical independence day.

Yes, that time-honored tradition of becoming completely in charge of all your own medical decisions with no input whatsoever from your parents at the ripe old age of twelve. You guessed it – I got blindsided by HIPAA, yet again.

You’d think I’d learn, but I suffer from a lifelong problem with being logical. Unlike the drooling, booger-eating bureaucrats who authored the HIPAA bill (most likely with crayons), I have met an actual twelve-year-old. As such, it just wouldn’t ever occur to me to put them in charge of what they should have for breakfast, let alone their medical decisions.

Waiter – “Good morning, what can I get you?”

Standard twelve-year-old – “Yes, good morning, I will have a fudge brownie, an empty glass, and a large bottle of syrup, please. And I do not believe I will be getting a tetanus shot this year. Or any other year. Thanks.”

So, there I was Monday morning, making a non-brownie and syrup breakfast for the boys, when my cell phone buzzed a calendar reminder. I glanced over to notice that I had ten minutes before Son Number Three’s doctor’s appointment was scheduled to start. His doctor is twenty minutes away from our house.

Holy crap! GET IN THE CAR!!!

I called the doctor’s office and had a stressful conversation with the appointment desk. They were really cool about it. The only reason the conversation was stressful was because I was having it while going 125 mph and sliding a Suburban sideways through intersections.

After I hung up and narrowly avoided an oncoming cement truck, I started to wonder, how did this happen? Why did I completely forget about this appointment? I obviously had it on my calendar, but why wasn’t I thinking about it. Why didn’t I wake up that morning with getting to the doctor on my mind?

Then I realized the answer. Usually when we have an appointment, I get about six emails and two or three text reminders ahead of time. “You have an upcoming appointment. Please let us know if you’re still able to make it.” “We’re looking forward to seeing you! Please fill out the pre-appointment health survey.” “Please let us know if you’ll need special assistance at your appointment, or an interpreter.” Yadda yadda.

I didn’t get a single communication before this appointment. I put it on my calendar six months ago and never heard from them again.

Well, we slid into the parking lot and ran to the waiting room, stopping only briefly for a nice lady at the front door to shoot our foreheads with the “you obviously don’t have COVID” laser. They saw him right away and I finally relaxed on the little spouse/parent chair in the corner of the exam room.

I apologized to the nurse for being late, thanked her for getting us right in, and then remarked how I had just realized I never received any emails or texts ahead of the visit.

She said simply, “Well, that’s because he turned twelve.”

OH, MY GOODNESS! Of course!! HIPAA!

Why was I even stressing? It wasn’t me that forgot the appointment after all. It was him! My irresponsible, medically-independent twelve-year-old son forgot all about his own appointment. C’mon, bro! Get it together. Why am I here at all, anyway? How come you didn’t set an alarm and jump on your bike at 5:30 A.M. to get yourself over here for your 7:00 appointment? For Pete’s sake, man.

When we were all done the nurse told me we could stop by the front desk on the way out and he could get his new twelve-year-old account all set up.

Hmm…

We set up the other two boys’ “private medical accounts” online, but I think I’ll skip it for Son Number Three.

They have no email address for him, and no phone number. So, whatever internet black hole they sent all the appointment reminders to, I want them to send the bills to the same damn place.

Let’s see how long they want to abide by the HIPAA rules then.

And if anyone out there is working to repeal these idiotic regulations, you can add “causes reckless driving” to the long list of things that are hazardous about letting a twelve-year-old be medically independent.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

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HIPAA Critical, Part III

Son Number Two turned twelve a few months ago, and you know what that means – yes, that’s right, Medical Independence!

Yes sir, nothing points out the fact that the collective IQ of our governing officials is below room temperature better than HIPAA, which stands for Hypocritical Idiots Pounding Abundant Alcoholic Beverages and Possibly Smoking Crack While Passing Insane Health Insurance Bills They Will Never Be Affected By Because They Don’t Live Under The Same Rules As The Commoners. (They cut out some of the letters because the acronym was getting too cumbersome. By the way, “Cumbersome Acronym” is obviously the name of my next rock band.)

The fully-lobotomized bureaucrats who authored the HIPAA bill, presumable with Crayons and drool, included the fun new law that anyone who has reached the ripe old age of twelve should now be in complete control of their medical decisions.

This was not news to our family, since we’d been through this once already with Son Number One. (He’s now thirteen years old, so under the HIPAA regulations he now has his own apartment and a Volkswagen Jetta.)

One easy way to know if your child has HIPAA’d up at twelve, is that their name will disappear from your list of family members on your medical provider’s website. That’s because, due to their newfound medical independence, you no longer have access to their medical records, even though you will be their legal guardian until they are eighteen, or if you are the parent of a hipster, thirty-five.

Now, sure, my twelve-year-old is probably better prepared to make his own medical decisions than Deklan, the thirty-two-year-old bearded chai-sucking blogger living in his parent’s basement, but that’s not really saying much, is it? Son Number Two is still twelve, after all, so his idea of a good medical decision after, let’s say, experiencing a blow to the head, would be to see if he could eat a whole ten-pound bag of granulated sugar with a spoon.

Captain Independence had gone into the doctor for something right before his magic HIPAA birthday, and a few weeks later when I logged on to attempt to pay the bill for the office visit, he had disappeared.

Under the HIPAA regulations, the doctor’s office is prohibited by law to set up his personal medically-independent online account over the phone. It must be done in person with the medically-independent twelve-year-old. In the meantime, I couldn’t pay his bill online because it simply didn’t exist on the website.

I must be honest. I didn’t lose any sleep over that.

When it came time for his regular checkup a few days ago, we went through the ridiculous charade of having him set up his “own” online medical account with the help of the nurse.

Now, I don’t ever expect anything logical to come out of a bureaucrat’s mouth, and neither should you. These are people who have never held down any real job more complicated than running the sour cream gun at a Taco Bell. Their entire existence revolves around clinging to their government job like a rabid squirrel on a caramel popcorn ball, so none of their decisions make any outward logical sense.

I do, however, expect people with real jobs, such as, let’s say, doctors and nurses, to make logical and reasonable decisions, and say logical and reasonable things. I expect these folks to do so during standard, everyday situations, and also in the face of complete government absurdity.

That being said, there we were in the examination room, with the nurse walking Son Number Two through how to set up his username and password on the in-room computer. “Type your username in here,” she said.

I told him what it should be so I would remember it.

She glanced at me with what appeared to be frustration on her face. Then she turned back to him and said, “OK, now your password.”

Again, I told him what it should be.

As a parent of a twelve-year-old, you can imagine how taken aback I was when the nurse turned to me and actually uttered the words, with a sigh, “Just so you know, this is supposed to be his own private account.”

*sound of a small blood vessel exploding in my brain*

I was so shocked I simply couldn’t help myself. I responded, “Just so YOU know, that’s just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” (Which is a true statement, and keep in mind, I have a teenager who talks.)

She then began sputtering about regulations and how they technically have to follow them, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah, but I cut her off.

“Never mind the fact that he is incapable of making good homework or personal hygiene decisions, let alone good medical decisions. Forget that part of this nonsense. Did you know that I can’t pay his bill without being able to access his ‘private account’? Do you have any idea what his username and password would be right now if I didn’t tell him what to write?”

“No.”

“Me neither. And do you know who else wouldn’t know? Him, in about fifteen seconds from now. And even if he had ‘remembered’ that he made his password ‘thisPasswordissuperlitty2,’ he would have spelled ‘Password’ wrong in the middle, so it wouldn’t have mattered. So, if you really want it to be his ‘private account,’ I'm actually all for that. Keep sending him the bill, and we’ll keep not paying it, and then you can send his medically-independent ass to collections and see how much money a judge will let you try to squeeze out of a twelve-year-old.”

Thankfully, they were basically done and we were able to leave before any more blood vessels popped in my head. I didn’t want to have to be admitted for treatment of a HIPAA-induced stroke.

I know the nurse was just trying to do her job in the face of governmental idiocracy, and I appreciate that, but c’mon, people! No matter what they tell you to do next, let’s make sure that common sense doesn’t get too uncommon out there!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Nursing School

My kids only have two more weeks of school left and I am not happy about it. Actually, they only have one more real week of school since the “last day” is the Thursday after the Memorial Day holiday. With no school on Monday, and an all-school field day on Tuesday, Wednesday will be filled with movies and games, and the last day is a half day, so it doesn’t even count.

Although, the one “real week” we have left isn’t really much of a week. The Friday before the Memorial Day weekend is a total write-off, and we have a couple minimum days in there too. Basically we’re in the elementary school equivalent of the last two weeks of your job before your official retirement date. You still show up to the office, but nothing productive is going to happen.

I’m not concerned with the lack of education that will occur in the next two weeks. I’m concerned, as always, about them being home all the time. School is very helpful to me. When they’re in school I can get things done. When they’re home they always want stuff.

“Dad, can we go to the park?”

“Dad, can we go to the pool?”

“Dad, can we play inside since it’s 105 degrees out?”

“Dad, can you feed us food?”

“Dad, can you come out of your office?”

“Dad?...”

“Dad, where are you?”

That’s going to get even more annoying if they ever find my hiding spot. I wish they would bug their mom for stuff but she’s a high school teacher, so during the summer months she automatically gets the better hiding spot.

Besides being in charge of them for the entire day, the main thing I’m concerned with as the school year draws to a close is the lack of medical notes I’ll get over the summer. Elementary schools are very good at notifying you of the dangers posed to your children by everyday life. I have a stack of “information letters” here on my desk just from the last few weeks.

How am I supposed to know if my children were exposed to hand-foot-and-mouth disease over the summer if I never receive a warning letter? Or conjunctivitis? Or fifth disease, whatever the hell that is.

“Son Number One has a cough.”

“How are we supposed to know what it might be? It’s July! We have no letters!”

And head lice. Don’t even get me started on head lice. Although, we tend to shear our boys like sheep over the summer, so that one shouldn’t be a problem.

It’s the absence of the head injury form that I’m most worried about. Son Number Three’s head comes into contact with hard objects, including other heads, so often that the school nurse has me on speed dial. She called the other day and didn’t even tell me who it was. She just said, “I’ll give you one guess why I’m calling.”

As she was handing him yet another concussion form to take home, he asked her, amazed, “How many of these forms do you have?”

The problem is he’s a little squirrelly when it comes to giving us information. (Possibly because he’s eight years old, possibly because of all the head injuries, probably a little of both.) I’m just not confident that over the summer I’m going to hear about every collision involving his head and a solid object. I can easily see a scenario where he’ll be playing down the street, collide with a parked car or a tree, knock himself completely out, wake up, cry for a while, see a butterfly, forget he’s hurt, chase the butterfly for two minutes, then tell me about it a week later.

I guess I’ll just have to hang on to one of these head injury notification letters for the summer and go through the concussion symptom awareness protocols every night just to be safe.

On the plus side, the short hair helps with more than just head lice. It makes it pretty easy to spot the goose eggs, too.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The Home Health Exam

As I told you back in March, I have a Google Alert on the phrase “Tree of Death” in an effort to keep tabs on my book. This has inadvertently kept me up to date on all the horrifying news from around the globe of the interesting and bizarre way people die at the hands (limbs?) of trees on a daily basis. Since we own six full-size trees, I decided to update our life insurance, for obvious possible tree-related reasons.

One of the fun parts about buying life insurance, besides the phone interview, is the home health exam. A highlight of this exam is when you get to bring an open-top container of your own urine to your dining room table for someone to scrutinize. We’ll get back to that.

My wife and I had our home medical examinations scheduled for 8:00 A.M. on a Saturday. The nurse showed up conveniently at 7:30 A.M.

She may have been early because I’m guessing breakfast at the nursing home is around 5:00 A.M. or so. I’m not saying she works at the nursing home, I’m guessing she lives there. Now, I don’t want to insult Edna, the travelling R.N., by calling her old, but let’s just say when she used to work at the hospital in her younger days, it very well could have been the first hospital.

The directives for the home health exam were no food or drink except water twelve hours before the exam, and be prepared to give a blood and urine sample. The blood is no problem, since I always carry it with me, but trying to “be ready to pee” is a different thing. I had to pee at 7:00 A.M., but decided to hold it, just in case. I was actually relieved that she was a half-hour early.

Trying to be a gentleman, I let my wife go first. Actually, she just told me she was going first because she really needed to pee. I am not a gentleman; I was just too stupid to argue. That was a mistake. I realized, as I hopped around in the other room, that I was well past the point of no return regarding urination. I should have gone at seven o’clock. I could have drank enough water to be ready again by the time it was my turn. Now Edna was already here. If I peed now, there was no way I could re-fill the tank in time. Not with just water. Beer, maybe, but not water. Dammit!

When it was finally my turn, I danced into the dining room and sat down with Edna. She had a certain order that she needed to fill out the parchment forms with her inkwell and her feather quill, so I was forced to try and sit still while her arthritic hands worked their magic. Fortunately, urine was third on the to-do list and not all the way at the bottom near John Hancock’s signature.

I am 6’-1” tall, and have been that tall ever since I stopped growing taller. Edna, on the other hand, has no doubt been shrinking over the years. I would put her at about 5’ even. After she wrote down all my pertinent information in calligraphy, (two score and one years aged), she tried to measure my height by reaching up to put a ruler on my head and measuring up to the ruler with a small, flimsy metal tape measure.

“I have you at six-foot-five.”

“Hmm. Sounds a bit high. I’m usually six-one.”

“OK, we’ll go with that. I don’t like to get up on chairs anymore.”

“I understand.”

This got me thinking two things. The first was, “Holy cow, I have to pee.” The second was, “What would the life insurance implications be if Edna had written down 6’-5”?”

What if they did an autopsy on me when I died and found out I was a full four inches shorter than shown on the policy? He lied about his height! Probably to get his height-to-weight ratio more in line with our actuarial tables. This tub of lard was probably fishing for a lower rate! Fraud!!! Sorry lady, payment denied!

Finally, after Edna had used her abacus to convert feet and inches into cubits and scrawled her findings on the parchment, it was time to pee. Yes!

This is where things started to go wrong for me. I blame some of my poor judgment on my urgent need to urinate, but mostly on Edna’s incredibly poor instructions. Still, truth be told, I should have figured it out.

She handed me two small stoppered glass vials, about the size of my pinky finger, and a little open-top plastic cup, roughly 1/4-cup in size (or, in deference to Edna’s more familiar measurement systems, about 0.0002 hogshead, or 0.001 firkins).

“Fill these two vials, and fill this cup up just past the little temperature gauge on the side. Don’t fill it up too much or it will spill. Be careful with the vials, because they fill up fast.”

Now, looking back on the situation with non-yellow-eyed clarity, what she should have said was, “Pee into this plastic cup, and fill it up all the way. Then, when you are finished emptying the contents of your bladder, and have the luxury of using both of your hands again, use this handy little pour spout here on the side to fill the two glass vials, and just make sure not to pour out the rest until I have read the temperature gauge on the side of the cup here.”

Those instructions would have been a whole lot better. As it was, I grabbed the three containers, ran for the bathroom, and followed her instructed order of events.

Filling the first vial took about a half a second… Now what? I can’t put the stopper in this thing one-handed, and I can’t set it down without the stopper in it… Must think fast…

Now, I won’t go into all the details of what happened in that bathroom, but suffice it to say, I managed to fill all three containers, and let’s just leave it at that.

It was only when I was walking back into the dining room that I noticed the cup had a little pour spout.

“OHHHH…”

“What was that, dear?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Here’s my urine. Please don’t set it on the table.”

Edna read the temperature and handed the cup back to me. “You can throw this away now.”

“Gladly.”

After we had both washed our hands (again) she took my blood, surprisingly with a needle and not leeches, and then we were done. She packed up her bag and pulled out her iPhone to check the time.

“Oh, good. I’ll be early to my next appointment. I have a full day, but hopefully I can make it back to Shady Acres for the late dinner serving at three o’clock.”

“Good luck with that, Edna. I’ll be here cleaning the bathroom.”

“What was that, dear?”

“Never mind.”

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!