I had knee replacement surgery at St Joe’s in December.  I’m the only person I know who still has operations done locally- everyone else seems to be going to St Helena or elsewhere. Me, I’m stubborn.  I live five minutes from St Joe’s and if I’m unhappy with my treatment I want to be able to find my doctor quickly and yell at him/her at length if needed.  So I stayed local.

This morning I got a call from a young man (he sounded young) asking me to “participate in a quality assurance survey regarding my recent experience at St. Joseph’s”.  I explained that my experience wasn’t over. I am still under their care and don’t have my closeout visit for another month. He consulted his instructions and said nothing required the treatment to be OVER before the evaluation. I questioned the value of doing an evaluation of a course of medical treatment that hadn’t been completed but he wanted to press on. Okay,  we’ll go on.

Now he asked:  how would I evaluate the check-in procedure? I had absolutely no recollection of checking in, except that it took place at 5AM which is an ungodly hour. He seemed to accept this.

Next question was: How would I evaluate the treatment I received from the staff?  Which staff, I asked.  Are you asking about the surgeon, the nurses, the anesthesiologist, who?  Which staff?  It just says, Staff, he replied.

At that point I cut my losses and told him I had better things to do than participate in a survey which was totally meaningless.  We all do.

If you get a call like this,- from St Joe’s or elsewhere-  remember it is YOUR time they are helping themselves to. Don’t participate in BS surveys which aren’t gathering useful information,  only being done to cover someone’s ass or to meet some bureaucratic requirement.  The corollary is to speak up or,  better, write a letter when you receive less than your due.  It’s up to us to write effective and fact-based letters of complaint.  Like the one St Joe’s is going  to get if they call me again with that survey.

END