My open letter to DFM:…read more
To Any and All Concerned Parties at Deerfield Family Medicine, Cooley Dickinson, or Mass General,
I'm reaching out today to offer my perspective as one of your patients' partner.
My partner, (redacted), has been suffering from some sort of respiratory illness for the past two weeks, as have our two year-old son and I. Specifically, I'd like to focus our struggle to get Megan a new inhaler for her underlying asthma, which greatly exacerbates her illness.
The low point in this situation for me was the 24 hours in which I tried desperately and unsuccessfully to comfort and distract our son while his mother repeatedly wheezed herself crosseyed and blue, and coughed until she threw up. He thought she was dying like our family pet did a few months ago. Imagine a terrified toddler asking you over and over, "Mama die? Mama die?" For that, you will forever hold a very dark place in my heart.
It seems unnecessary to put my family through that when all we needed was for DFM to place a call to the pharmacy and order an inhaler to replace the one she used up more quickly than expected during her illness.
Even more unnecessary, and adding insult to injury, was your receptionist becoming angry and rude when Megan was struggling to speak clearly because she was short of breath during one of the many times she called and waited patiently through 10+ minute holds to try to straighten out the situation. Please convey our sincere apologies to this receptionist who Megan so deeply offended. Perhaps everyone at DFM who failed to get Megan an inhaler should also apologize to the receptionist for her lack of volume. Maybe we can all pitch in and buy her some cupcakes as a token of our regret for being an annoyance.
Fortunately, Megan was able to make an appointment with Health Services at Mount Holyoke College where she is a student after we gave up entirely on DFM. They saw her immediately and put her on a nebulizer the moment they saw how badly she was struggling to breathe, and prescribed a steroid-plus-albuterol inhaler in addition to her regular inhaler. They called it in to the pharmacy immediately, and she had her medications in hand within 20 minutes. Apparently it's not impossible to get someone urgently-needed medication for an acute condition in a reasonable timeframe.
As I write this, it has been roughly 48 hours since we started trying to get the rescue inhaler from DFM, and the pharmacy still hasn't received the script. As far as DFM knows, she's still struggling for breath. I'll be interested to see when, if ever, we get a call from the pharmacy to tell us the no-longer-needed prescription is ready.
I'm sure you have reasons/excuses for this massive failure. I don't care. Figure it out and do better, or close the practice.
Be aware that this is an open letter, which I will distribute as widely as possible, both to the public and the administration of Cooley Dickinson and Mass General. My goal is to cause at least one person at Deerfield Family Medicine to lose their job.
Sincerely,
Bryan W. Dolan
