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scam #101 - jack vs. the medical bureaucracy
it has not taken long to discover that the only thing that is more frustrating than the recovery time of this injury, is the absolute futility of ever reaching a live medical professional to ask about it.
...be it prescriptions, appointments, or god forbid, pre-surgical medical questions solicited of a doctor: each manic, information-hungry, stab into the bureaucracy of the hospital system results in a recursive loop of phone menus offering a suite of options that don't match the request. ultimately, most of these questions end up in a generic phone box, and lie dormant for days, sometimes weeks, until (or if) a response is made.
absolute fucking insanity. we are not calling an erosion control hotline. we are calling a medical office. the requested information is necessary, pertinent, and above all things, time-sensitive.
it is 9:16 a.m, and i am stalled on yet another hold queue—involuntarily tapping my foot to a madonna song considered so risque as to be banned from radio only a decade ago—and i'm just waiting for the two-tone-beep which indicates i have been timed-out, and unceremoniously dumped into a dusty voice mailbox. tapping my foot, looking at my system clock, and just counding the seconds; "there has got to be another way."
ctrl-t, ctrl-l, www.google.com, [enter]
30 minutes later, i've found a free utility for spoofing a CLID (Caller ID), and the and the exit key sequence necessary to drop out of the proprietary(1) voice menu system employed by their office.
requisite tools in place, i move on to collect environmental data: a few focused search strings on the health system's website, i've found the intended internal department name of my query, the location of their office, and what seems like a unsuspicious call center #.
...and now, now i'm ready...
...........
i enter the code; three clicks, in rapid succession. probably call routing switches... and it's ringing.
sure enough, sporting my new in-system ID, the internal operator doesn't even blink when i ask to be forwarded to the "medical records library." two rings later—fuck me—a human answers the phone...
"yes, i'd like to request a copy of patient XXXX's x-rays, as documented on the dates D1, D2, and D3.""would you like film duplicates, or is digital media all right?"
"digital is acceptable. probably save you some trouble too."
"yes, they sure do. we can have those ready for you in an hour, sir. would you like to mail them to your department, or..."
crap. i didn't think about this. intercepting mail is illegal, and i'm not out to break the law. "i'd rather finish this patient report tonite: may i pick them up in person? you're on the 10th floor, correct?"
"yes sir."
"brilliant. i'll be by this afternoon. do i ask for you by name, or?"
"they will be waiting for you at the front desk. you will need to tell them the patient name and ID."
"execellent. thanks so much for your time."
[ click ]
..........
an hour! now, that's what i call service.
time for phase 2: the social hack. look the part, acquire the media. a friend suggested that i don a lab coat, but i think that would be too much, too obvious... i'm thinking a slightly ruffled blue button down oxford, some chinos, and maybe that old beeper will be just about right.
use $STD_LIB/eddie_haskel; sweet_talk ();
[1] (this pearl of information came up during an informal conversation with a chatty receptionst during my last office visit: we were innocently commiserating about flakey corporate phone systems, and she mentioned their recent roll-out.)
today, i discover that many of the commercial vendors of these systems provide readily available documentation for deploying and testing the call routing software. amazing what happens when you rtfm. )
Comments
u need your own tv show. i'd watch that reality any time. go eddie, go!
Posted by: juju at May 13, 2005 12:27 AM
tv show? it would probably be really boring, and subsequently canned after just one show... one might argue that few experiences could be more self-deprecating than being dropped from reality tv for being "lame."
Posted by: jack b. at May 13, 2005 09:57 AM
nice. good to know anyone can call in and get your records sent to wait for you at the front desk. Definitely no go on the lab coat - that would be pushing it. old school pager is a must!
Posted by: JJ at May 13, 2005 07:35 PM