Today I took a day off to take my daughter for the 3rd part of B2 Vaccination at Palo Alto Medical Foundation in Fremont. Normally, my wife would take the my daughter to the Dr. I went there, the appointment was confirmed and we’re only waited a very short time until the nurse called us in. After checking and asking all the legal questions, the nurse looked at the computer and told us that she couldn’t perform the vaccination today because the Dr. didn’t order the vaccine. I couldn’t believe that the vaccination consist of 3 parts, we finished 2 parts already and the last part is without Dr. order. She specifically stated that every vaccine must have the Dr’s order. My wife took my daughter there 2 times and didn’t even know that every time she needed the Dr’s order, the system is broken badly. We’re sent home.
I know we’re patients, we’re nothing compared to Dr., Nurses and the big hospital, we need them and they don’t need us, but I thought we should have some respects because we do pay a lot for all the procedures and visits.
Millions dollar high tech facility and the appointment system is flawed, it just shows the hospital doesn’t care about the well being of the patients. The solution is simple:
Without Dr.’s order, there is NO appointment.
Without Vaccine, there is NO vaccine appointment.
The software people (I’m sure charged thousands of dollars to set it up) just need to gray out (no input) the appointment date if Dr. order or vaccine doesn’t exist. It’s a simple AND Boolean function. NO one can make any appointment if all the must have elements are NOT true.
If the appointment was made and one of the must have element suddenly became unavailable, the patient should receive an automatic call to remind them NOT to come to save them time and money. That would be nice.
Yes, it’s a simple mistake, just go home and make a new appointment, come back next week, my wife said.
Gas now is expensive, the traffic is always congested any time of day, the cost of living is higher every day, this kind of mistake can be avoided by simple software fix or it costs too much for the hospital to pay, so let the patients pay for their mistakes, just like the cars makers refuse to recall mistakes and wait for people to die then pay penalties, it’s cheaper.
Yes, this is the first time it happened to us, but how many times it happened to other people because of the flawed system? I’m in the tech industry, “do it right the first time”, does it apply to medical profession? It doesn’t look like it does.
It scares me sometimes thinking about mistakes medical professional do. I hope they don’t make mistakes injecting wrong vaccine to my daughter, because the Dr. may reorder the wrong one.