George Graham

Perils of Privatization 2

 

You probably won’t believe this but my adventures with privatized health care just got weirder.

CarePlus, my new health insurance provider, had told me they used a company named One Home Care Solutions to provide those antibiotic infusions I must have. And I had been calling One Home Care Solutions over the past couple of weeks as I tried to switch from Baycare, the home care company used by my previous insurance provider Coventry. But it turns out – at the last minute – that One Home Care Solutions doesn’t provide IV services for CarePlus in Polk County, where I live.

Amazingly, nobody at One Home Care Solutions had mentioned this in all the phone conversations I’d had with them. Indeed, some guy who said he represented One Home Care Solutions,  phoned me last night to set up the nurse’s visit today. And this morning when I called One Home Care Solutions, I was assured they had received my new doctor’s prescription (at last!) and the “ticket” was being processed.

Of course, by the time One Home Care Solutions discovered I wasn’t in their service area, the weekend was almost upon us and everything was closed or closing.

There was no way to get the doctor to send a referral to Integrated Home Care ( the agency that’s actually supposed to provide IV services for CarePlus in Polk County) before Monday,

Mercifully, after a flurry of phone calls involving my daughter Grace, who had come to my rescue, CarePlus, Baycare, Medicare, and the hospital that had ordered the IV infusions as part of my discharge order, I was told a nurse will be here later this evening. (It’s now after 7 p.m., and the IV was supposed to have been administered between 1 and 2 p.m.)

Good ol’ Baycare has stepped in to pick up the ball again – and they won’t get a cent for their trouble as they don’t do business with my new insurance provider.

Look, I don’t care how inefficient you think the government is, do you really believe they could mess things up any worse than this?

About the author

gwgraeme

I am a Jamaican-born writer who has lived and worked in Canada and the United States. I live in Lakeland, Florida with my wife, Sandra, our three cats and two dogs. I like to play golf and enjoy our garden, even though it's a lot of work. Since retiring from newspaper reporting I've written a few books. I also write a monthly column for Jamaicans.com