You can all lash out at me if you want but all I did was offer up one possible reason why this may have happened. If you don’t like an office’s policy, take it up with them, your anger towards me is misguided.
So you’re saying the office did not have a policy of waiting to speak face to face to deliver results?
You’re reading this on a message board, it was copied from another message board and typed up by someone that appears to still be angry about the situation. I don’t know about you, but I’m quite confidant we don’t have all the information.
You can infer from my statements whatever you choose.
I didn’t express anger towards you. It was towards the policy. You can’t simultaneously say, “I’m just the messenger,” and then act as if people are criticizing you personally when they criticize the contents of the message.
I suppose if I were to say that the doctors and medical institutions letting all those guys in Tuskegee die of syphilis without telling them there was a cure because they wanted to monitor the course of the disease was cruel, heartless and criminal and should never have happened, Joey would pop in to remind us that “golly gee, it was their policy.” Yes, indeed, it certainly was. And it sucked as well.
And that, too, would be an utterly stupid thing to say.
Regarding HIPAA, if the truth were known, it’s genuine purpose was probably to protect the providers, not the patients. You only encounter mention of it when you’re trying to find out about something in your own records and they need an excuse to withhold them.
The story doesn’t make much sense to me. They would have not done a biopsy unless she had other symptoms. And the symptoms of pancreatic cancer are usually pretty severe. And I can’t imagine that they would do a biopsy without a prior CAT scan that showed an abnormality.
A clean biopsy for suspected pancreatic cancer does not mean the patient doesn’t have cancer. False negatives are common. The quote attributed to the doctors office does not sound real. Now maybe they might have said “we didn’t want to reveal to your mother that the results were negative because then she wouldn’t come in for her consultation”. Which is sort of what they said to us. And they were right. The negative biopsy was meaningless and we did not understand that until we consulted with the doctor.
As someone that used to be active in all sorts of pancreatic cancer support groups, I do concur with the “unbelievable” assessment…but it’s unbelievable in a different way.
actually here in ca its illegal for anyone but a doctor (preferably yours) to give you your test results …. I have liver problems and have an ultrasound once a year and I asked the tech if they seen anything unusual and they said " I cant legally tell you yes or no all I do is mark down what the scanner shows "
And my doctors the type that if you don’t get a call 3 or 4 days after the test assume nothings wrong because I only see him every 8-12 weeks
While I wouldn’t be quick to accept something an unknown person posted on an Internet forum as gospel, I’ve seen enough to know that the system for letting patients know test results in a timely manner needs plenty of improvement.
Hot tip: never accept a statement that it takes a week to ten days (or more) for biopsy results to come back so you have to wait until your next appointment to find out results. In our pathology practice, 85-95% of biopsies are reported out within 24 hours of receiving the specimen, and 99% or so within 72 hours (occasionally a complex case requires supplemental testing or consultation that might take a week or more). “Wait until your next appointment” is mostly for the convenience of the clinician or because of bad office systems. “Patient portals” for displaying lab results are better than nothing but still a work in progress.
If there’s no good reason for a substantial delay in getting a biopsy report I’d raise hell until I got the results. I would rather be perceived as a pain in the ass than worry for days over something that turned out to be nothing.*
*it’s true that “false positive” pancreatic biopsies occur, often because something other than tumor was inadvertently sampled or inadequate specimens. There could also be a non-malignant condition that still requires appropriate followup or surgical intervention.
On the bright side, with so many shareholders buying new airplanes, the second-hand market is glutted … now is a good time to buy these “oldies-but-goodies” …