New doctor, new dentist

 

We're having bad luck with most of our family's chosen medical professionals lately.

Our dentist retired and passed his business off to another dentist. The new dentist seems very nice and knowledgeable. And, our dental hygienist, Mary, who is wonderful, now works for the new dentist. That said, there are three reasons we're leaving: 

1. Proximity While the new dentist is no farther from work, he's still west of work.  We live northeast of work.

2. Insurance The old dentist took my dental insurance.  Surprisingly, the new dentist does not.

3. Security Our old dentist was old school; he kept paper records. The new dentist keeps electronic records. The one time I did go to the new dentist, I was impressed by the fact that there was a computer in every examination room. Each computer has access to a central server with patient data on it. After the cleaning and examination, I asked Mary to click on the red shield with 'x' on it in the Windows XP system tray. (*Hint*: a red sheild with the 'x' indicates that Windows thinks something is wrong with you computer's security.) When she clicked on it, a security status window popped up indicating that Automatic Updates were disabled, the Firewall was turned off, and no Anti-virus program was found. WTF! I then asked if the computer had access to the internet.  (*Note*: even without internet access, having an unprotected computer access patient records is very bad.) Mary wasn't entirely sure, so we clicked on Internet Explorer and the default msn.com webpage loaded with the day's recent news headlines.  Holy ---- Batman!  I won't go on with the details of me warning them about this and their assurance that their hired IT help said it was ok (can you say HIPPA violation?).  Let's just say, we will be asking that they share our records with our new dentist, once we get one, and that they promptly delete our records. I'll also be grilling the new dentist about his or her computer security fairly thoroughly.

Our family doctor and pediatrician, on the other hand, has excellent computer security practices.  Each doctor and nurse practitioner has a laptop the carry to the examination rooms that is locked down.  And, like the dentist, we really like the people in the doctor's office.  The problem we have with them can be summed up in one word: availability.  They seem to have taken on more patients then they can handle, and their methods of communication are limited to one: phone.  When we call the office, we always get voicemail.  Callbacks take a long time, and often feel rushed, probably because they have so many callbacks in their queue.  Recently, we had an experience that was the final straw that broke the camel's back.  Jenny called on a Tuesday during business hours to schedule an appointment for a chickenpox vaccination for Alli (the school requires it now).  She left a message, as usual.  After two days of not hearing anything, I called back on that Thursday after hours and left another message.  That was a couple of weeks ago.  We still haven't heard back.