November 7 Well, its all about money. Medicare, as I believe I mentioned, will cover chronic end-stage renal failure, but not acute renal failure for out patients. Since Honeys primary coverage is Medicare, she has to pay for her out patient treatment out-of-pocket, be told by medicare that they dont cover this kind of treatment, and then her secondary - Blue Cross FEP - will become the primary, and pay her back. Someday. In the meantime, they had her in the hospital on observation status Tuesday and Wednesday night - which means she will have to pay part of the costs. However, she had a heart fibrillation episode this morning at 4 am, (which was back to normal by 8:00) so they were able to admit her as a patient for Wednesday night and tonight. She had dialysis yesterday and today, and it looks as though we have the out-patient stuff sorted out. Maybe. If so, she will be out tomorrow morning. For real. We did call the Patient Advocate, because we felt she had been treated a bit shoddily in terms of the discharge. Another thing was that the hospital doctor who was called at 4:00 am said hed be in as soon as he finished with the patient he was with, and never showed up. And there was the incident on Halloween when her cath-port was bleeding and the nurse did not handle the situation very well at all. Well, the room became Grand Central Station for a while. In addition to her kidney doctor, who visits at 7:15 every day, her nurse and the nursing tech for the shift, the housekeeping and food service people, and the nurse who was doing the dialysis - all regular and to be expected - her cardiologist stopped by, followed by someone taking some blood, then the Patient Advocate, someone from Physical Therapy who took her for a walk and someone from Occupational Therapy who spent 5 minutes and said shed return, but never did, (we hadnt seen either of these in the previous long stay,) the director of Case Management, the person arranging her out-patient process, a hospitalist, another lab assistant for more blood, and the entire cast and crew of the Ringling Bros. circus. Whew! So, here it is - now I will sleep, go to the hospital at 7:00, as I have tried to do every day, and try once more to spring her. And I just put together a lovely new Rollator walker, so she can exercise by hall-walking while we are staying here, and have a sit and a rest as necessary!
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 02:42:29 +0000
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