if job titles told the truth…

The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy. (Proverbs 12:22)

Yesterday I had this great conversation with the circulation folk at The Tampa Tribune. It’s renewal time and – having noticed how Rebekah and I haven’t had time to read the Sunday edition in over a year – I wanted to tweak our subscription.

The first person I spoke with didn’t have the access necessary to make the adjustment, so she asked me to hold for the next person up on the food chain. “No problem,” I said, “thanks for your help.”

About three minutes later a voice came on the phone, “Escalation desk; good afternoon, this is ‘Rita.’”

“Hello,” I replied. “But I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Did you say escalation desk?”

“That’s right,” she said. “It’s another word for ‘supervisor.’”

“That’s awesome!” I said. “I love your job title; it’s the most accurate possible outside of, ‘The person we make customers talk with when they start to go off the deep end!‘ What percentage of the people you talk with get passed on to you because they’re irate?”

That’s when she started to giggle. “You’ve no idea how nice it is to have a pleasant conversation,” she said. “You can call back any time if you’re going to make me laugh.”

We got the subscription details sorted out easily, but it made me wonder about how cool it would be if all job titles were as accurate as “Escalation Desk.”

TRUTH: Here are a few alternate job titles that immediately come to mind (Please feel free to send me more ideas):

• “Claim Denier” – (health benefits counselor)
• “Travel Killjoy” – (TSA worker)
• “Let me ignore you while I’m texting my friends” – (supermarket checkout clerk)
• “Flim-flam artist” – (member of Congress)
• “Director of Wishful Thinking” – (marketing specialist)
• “Hold-button operator” – (customer service representative)
• “Cliché expert” – (football coach)
• “Commute disabler” – (road construction worker)

In my imaginary “accurate job-description” world, I call the phone company and they answer, “Good morning, I’m here to waste your time, fail to answer your questions, and talk you into a ‘savings-bundle’ that will turn out to increase your bill by 30%.”

When I contact my health insurance, the representative will say, “Greetings, I’m in charge of making sure we don’t pay a dime on your claim. We love collecting your high premium but we’d rather stash it in offshore accounts where our executives can enrich themselves at your expense while we deny basic services. That’s why we give you confusing information and routinely deny everything the first time it crosses our desks. Have a nice day.”

The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy. (Proverbs 12:22)

- DEREK

When sick is a full-time job

Medical Center

Yesterday I got up uber-early to head up to Gainesville with my brother, Geoff. He had an 8:30 appointment with the transplant specialists at the Shands Medical Center. His clinical day, Monday, was Shands in the morning then Moffitt in the afternoon and lots of time on the phone with the Miami transplant center in between.

Essentially, being sick is a full-time job.

Shands turned him down. But the trip wasn’t an entire waste of time because you learn something every go-round – and this was the first opportunity I’d had to actually sit in on a conversation with one of the doctors.

Essentially, Shands said “no” for the same reasons Mayo did  in Jacksonville… then more besides because it’s been a few months since the comprehensive Mayo evaluation and a couple more things have gone south since.

I’m not posting my blog today to hang all my brother’s personal medical details out for public view, but to talk about a couple of Big Picture stories that Geoff’s journey bumps up against and sheds some light on.

First is the enormity and complexity of liver disease. The doctor told us there are 15,000 people on the transplant waiting list at any given time – and around 4,000 procedures annually. One reason people don’t get new organs is availability, and the other is when the team doesn’t think a new liver would solve the problem.

Another story is cost. Cost is a tricky issue to talk about because there are a lot of internal contradictions, logical non-sequiturs and “1,000 pound gorillas in the room”.

Nurse updating files, questions, etc etc etc.....

First of all, cost is entirely irrelevant if you don’t qualify for a procedure for medical reasons. Then, and certainly related to this, no amount of money is capable of effecting a cure that’s not there to be had. At the same time, all resources are in a finite supply, so both benefits and expertise are allocated according to industry standards. It’s a fact of life in that enough money will certainly buy preferential access… but dollars probably won’t buy a liver you can’t use, and money certainly won’t change the medical facts of your case.

We also discovered that cost-cutting measures back at Geoff’s old workplace (the people who provided medical insurance as an employment benefit) directly impact his point of service options. Simply put, when my brother’s old boss decided to switch to a cheaper healthcare policy, Geoff lost benefits.

The doctor at Shands was personable, friendly, engaging, knowledgable, familiar with Geoff’s file, frank, realistic and – this is important – attentive. He was not rushed or conscious of time, he fielded every question and he wasn’t evasive out of fear that we’d quote him somewhere else or attach unreasonable expectations to his opinions. Above all, he obviously respected Geoff, Geoff’s medical knowledge, and his level of understanding. The doctor even offered concrete suggestions as to what specific questions he would have addressed next if Geoff had been accepted as his patient.

So, kudos on the doctor… but ongoing disappointment in Geoff’s liver. His liver is supposed to be a vital organ, but it seems to have commitment issues, and is continuing to move toward an increasingly vulnerable future.

I may be learning a lot – but I don’t necessarily like what – now – I know.

-  DEREK