This past Monday my mom fell, hard, while getting up from the lunch table. As they ought, the assisted living staff summoned an ambulance and my mom got a quick ride to the Palace on Ballas.
My brother and I arrived at the Emergency Room just as mom did. Despite the paramedics emphasizing mom’s age, mental condition, obvious head injury, use of blood thinners, heart conditions and such the staff decided she could wait. The paramedics transferred her to one of the hospital’s gurneys and found her a corner in a hallway next to the very crowded waiting room.
There we waited. And waited.
My mom has serious dementia. My brother and I constantly calmed her down, kept her from yanking on the paramedics’ IV line, prevented her from getting off the gurney, and, repeatedly reminded her that she needed x-rays for her swollen knee and a CT scan on her head.
After a couple of hours a woman in scrubs loudly announced that all non-patients had to leave the waiting area IMMEDIATELY ! To emphasize that point six folks in security garb began herding people to the door.
We tried to explain that my mom needed someone she knew with her. We still got sent outside.
I’ve experienced this before.
When many professionals get overwhelmed instead of working their way through the issue they decide that nothing can make a difference, so, they just make noise and stop trying.
For example, back in May a $25,000 IRS refund check headed to me was stolen by a postal employee at my local post office and deposited in an ATM in the city. (The check was for the Trust my late friend established in his Will for his wife’s family.) As instructed, I contacted the postal inspector, city police and county police. I learned that the stealing of checks from the mail is a common thing around here, oft carried out by coordinated teams with access to not just the mail but phantom bank accounts too. In my case the inspector quickly identified two suspects.
Happy ending? Well, the city report called the check “worthless paper” and ‘cleared’ the case. The county police refused to take a report. And the inspector doesn’t seem to be able to return my calls. All the law enforcement professionals claim they are swamped. So, cases languish.
More examples? How about Missouri state government.
The Department of Social Services used a lack of staff and resources as a big part of their defense for violating all sorts of food stamp rules. The federal judge was not impressed. Now bureaucrats claim that the reason hundreds of thousands of Missourians have lost their Medicaid (MO HealthNet) coverage is due to disabled folks and kids not completing paperwork and the state lacking the people to help them.
The professionals over at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education are so overworked that they’re months behind paying child care providers, and, summer food benefits for kids probably won’t get paid out till Halloween or Thanksgiving.
Again, professionals fret and nothing gets done.
I see a problem here and the problem is us: as a group we’ve grown so accustomed to the ‘I’m overworked’ defense that we accept it. Yes, the waiting room is full but why aren’t those needing care getting it? Yes, you have a pile of criminal cases but how many arrests have you made? Yes, thousands need food stamps and Medicaid but why doesn’t the state follow federal rules? You get the idea.
Until we stop accepting the excuses service will continue to get worse. Professionals will be too busy to help us. Squeaky wheels are irritating but they are not ignored.
After dinner time my mom finally got into the working part of the emergency room. Her gurney had been relocated to “Hallway 2.” Though they didn’t tell us, they had done the CT scan and x-rays, all giving good results. Of course, she was extremely disoriented and her pants were covered in blood: left alone, she had yanked out the IV line. Freed from the palace, she got to spend the night very bruised and exhausted in her own room. The way the day went we’ll take that as a happy ending.
Glenn Koenen
Title illustration was generated with Microsoft Image Creator