2 May 2021
Friday we tried to reorder some supplies. Because, you know, you run out of them when you use them. Not everybody appreciates that.
We thought we'd start small and reorder the Dakin's Solution from the Kaiser pharmacy. In the past this never worked. You could order, sure, but the order would never be filled. When you called to find out about the order, you were told it wasn't available but you could buy it over the counter at CVS or Walgreens.
Except CVS and Walgreens don't carry it.
So you call back and get them to order it for you after they tell you that you can buy it yourself from Amazon (which Joyce won't do). And then you have to find out when it will arrive at the pharmacy because they can't mail solutions.
So we tried that first using the Kaiser Web site.
No way. We can't reorder Dakin's Solution until Monday. That's when it's eligible for reorder. You know, when we run out of it and have to spend a week getting someone to replace it.
Can't wait for Monday.
We have enough until Tuesday then I can use the saline solution or Vashe (which we is also running low) until the Dakin's Solution arrives.
Can't wait for Monday.
So we continued, visiting the Byram site to reorder the large Mediplex pads that cover the wound. We use two at a time, four a day. We get 120 a month, which works out.
And, because I had been using six small ones a day for a couple of weeks (because we had been mistakenly sent 120 small pads once), they were eligible for reorder (which means Medicare agrees to pay 80 percent).
Joyce selected them from the list and went through the seven or eight steps to complete the order. Except she got hung up on one of the last steps that wanted $30 for outstanding invoices past due.
That should have been the first step, don't you think?
Yes, we went through this already. And Byram sent Joyce an invoice and she wrote a check for a few hundred dollars and thought everything had been settled.
We did the online chat thing but were told to call the Kaiser rep. So we did.
Not only did Joyce owe $30, she claimed, but the pads were not on our approved supplies list.
We'd just selected them, I pointed out. I gave her the reference number. She said the authorization had expired.
I said the surgeon had authorized them, we've been using them for months and we need them. She said she'd talk to her supervisor. The supervisor approved the shipment. But the surgeon has to "resubscribe" them.
I'll mention that at the clinic when we go Monday afternoon.
Then we spent an hour looking for the invoice Byram sent to see if Joyce had shorted them or if Byram had not applied the amount to all the outstanding invoices or if Byram had incorrectly invoiced her for only one of the three past due invoices. Or what.
But Joyce sent the invoice back with the check without making a copy. She thinks.
I'm telling you this as an introduction to this Mary Maxwell video, which I found while trying to stream the Warriors game yesterday (the app lost the feed repeatedly) on Chromecast. And when I played it for Joyce after dinner, she laughed:
And I couldn't remember the last time I heard her laugh.