Just the other day I needed to get someone into a rather high quality medical institution. I was worried that there would be no place, but was told that so-and-so has connections there, so I called the guy up. He said to call the place directly and if they had no place available, to call back. So I did and the place said they had absolutely no empty beds, possibly they might have someone check out unexpectedly tomorrow, call back then. So instead I called back so-and-so and he said he would get back to me in a few minutes, and he did to tell me to call “Janice” at the medical place who would fit my guy in. Which is what happened.
So my question is why the place told me there were no beds available to begin with. Obviously they had a bed sitting empty at the time, because otherwise my connected guy couldn’t have swung it for me, so why tell me that there was no place initially?
My wife thinks a high quality place probably has a policy of deliberately keeping an open bed or two for just this purpose - so as to allow connected people (mostly doctors at the institution) the ability to get their people (patients, in the case of doctors) in.
But perhaps someone more familiar with the way these institutions operate has actual knowledge.