On the force
PART1: WORK
While I haven't heard back yet from my interview last week (which makes me think I may not have done as good a job concealing my hideous boil as I'd thought), I did get a call out of the blue from the restaurant second on my list. I had an interview with them this morning & I was asked to start friday, so big Cam's a working man again.
And what I naively referred to last friday as the longest week ever, was in fact much longer than I'd anticipated. Upon my return to the clinic to pick up doctor's note ($20... I'll get to this later) I inadvertently picked up some type of virus along with it. So I spent the following 3 days with a blazing fever and tonsils visibly bulging from my neck, making the weekend far worse than if I'd not gone back to the clinic at all, and just toughed out the antibiotic side-effects.
PART 2: BEEF
Now for the $20. On tuesday I went to the doctor's to get my neck thingy checked out. The doc got some information from me, checked me out, diagnosed me with a neck boil, prescribed antibiotics, and I left a happy man.
I returned on thursday because I was suffering side-effects from the antibiotics. On the second visit, I was in the waiting room for 45 minutes, the doctor spoke to me for approximately 2 minutes, and gave me no medical procedure, treatment, or advice whatsoever. I was only there to document that I was indeed on antibiotics, and they indeed had side-effects (you can get that info from Shoppers, it's not an MD-specific skill).
The first trip had no fee, the second trip cost me $20. I'd totally forgotten until they asked me for it, that at some doctors' you have to pay for a doc's note (and handsomely in my opinion). I've got a problem with that. If you wanna charge me extra, charge me for your expert medical services. Being charged $20 for my doctor's signature is so reminiscent of the pain I feel when I've gotta pay $8 for a shitty airport grilled cheese.
Treating patients the central part of a doctor's job, and providing documentation of that treatment should be a trivial matter if the treatment itself has been paid for. To offer the treatment for cost, but tack on charges for documentation of it seems backwards, and like a real cash-grab because the clinics have a monopoly on the doctor's notes.
I'd expect to pay if he were endorsing a passport or something peripheral, but a doc's note is pretty directly related his main work, and paying extra for it I can't help but feel bamboozled. It's not a lot of money, but doctors are supposed to be bastions of ethics, and to feel conned by them doesn't sit well with me.
While I haven't heard back yet from my interview last week (which makes me think I may not have done as good a job concealing my hideous boil as I'd thought), I did get a call out of the blue from the restaurant second on my list. I had an interview with them this morning & I was asked to start friday, so big Cam's a working man again.
And what I naively referred to last friday as the longest week ever, was in fact much longer than I'd anticipated. Upon my return to the clinic to pick up doctor's note ($20... I'll get to this later) I inadvertently picked up some type of virus along with it. So I spent the following 3 days with a blazing fever and tonsils visibly bulging from my neck, making the weekend far worse than if I'd not gone back to the clinic at all, and just toughed out the antibiotic side-effects.
PART 2: BEEF
Now for the $20. On tuesday I went to the doctor's to get my neck thingy checked out. The doc got some information from me, checked me out, diagnosed me with a neck boil, prescribed antibiotics, and I left a happy man.
I returned on thursday because I was suffering side-effects from the antibiotics. On the second visit, I was in the waiting room for 45 minutes, the doctor spoke to me for approximately 2 minutes, and gave me no medical procedure, treatment, or advice whatsoever. I was only there to document that I was indeed on antibiotics, and they indeed had side-effects (you can get that info from Shoppers, it's not an MD-specific skill).
The first trip had no fee, the second trip cost me $20. I'd totally forgotten until they asked me for it, that at some doctors' you have to pay for a doc's note (and handsomely in my opinion). I've got a problem with that. If you wanna charge me extra, charge me for your expert medical services. Being charged $20 for my doctor's signature is so reminiscent of the pain I feel when I've gotta pay $8 for a shitty airport grilled cheese.
Treating patients the central part of a doctor's job, and providing documentation of that treatment should be a trivial matter if the treatment itself has been paid for. To offer the treatment for cost, but tack on charges for documentation of it seems backwards, and like a real cash-grab because the clinics have a monopoly on the doctor's notes.
I'd expect to pay if he were endorsing a passport or something peripheral, but a doc's note is pretty directly related his main work, and paying extra for it I can't help but feel bamboozled. It's not a lot of money, but doctors are supposed to be bastions of ethics, and to feel conned by them doesn't sit well with me.
