That is, she is not a robotic or machined doctor. I am told by rich friends that old fashioned doctors like her make house calls for thousands of dollars. My great grandfather was an old fashioned country doctor in Pennsylvania, a horse being a major investment in his profession. Doctors then and there had a license to distribute alcohol as medicine, and that was his ruin. Times have changed a lot even for those of us over seventy. General practitioners have evolved into gatekeepers at stock yards where doom impends. Yet I see Dr. Welvaert loving her job for its sacred mission. It is none of my business, but I cannot help suspecting she is at times tormented by the sheer drill of factory life and the expectation of patients, that they are loved by her like a daughter, that she will, somehow, save all of them as she clicks through their files on the computer and asks, “Are you depressed?” "Are you kidding? Not after I see you. "
Dr. Cira Welvaert
I heard an investment company had bought the medical centers and flipped them to another investment company called Sun Capital Partners for a half billion dollars because they thought they could take advantage of Medicare Advantage and squeeze more value out of them by mechanizing services to run herds of patients through the medical corrals more efficiently. Hopefully, I thought, some of that value would go to underpaid employees and for better care for patients. Maybe they should buy that community medical center down the street, I thought, with its horrible reputation for wait times and a manager arrested for ripping off millions of dollars.
One woman at Clinical Care today, nearly in tears, her lunch on her lap, said she had been waiting for her cleaning appointment for 3 hours. I said she should complain about the abuse of our time, turning us into slaves of their Machine. She said she had complained but they just ignore complaints. They eventually took her in the back for cleaning. She was only gone ten minutes so I wondered if she only had two or three real teeth to clean. After I waited an hour or so, two more patients arrived.
An elderly man evidently in pain carrying a letter from a medical center in Ft. Lauderdale said he had been waiting for 4 hours at the clinic to see the doctor. The short list that I was at the end of appeared to be getting longer and longer ahead of me. The lady on the desk tried to be helpful but said she did not know what was going on, so after 2 hours waiting I complained.
I had experience in the past at the clinic, waiting and waiting, and seeing people come and demanding in Spanish to be seen right way and put before me, which several times caused me to just get up and leave instead of getting blood tests or seeing a doctor. For all they cared, I could have died waiting. People did not seem to mind that much, and I noticed some of the same older folks and a homeless person or two seemed to be there every time I visited. Well, the free coffee distributed by the machines was great. Snacks were distributed to everyone. Women could have their hair done. There were events that made the place seem more like a community center than a medical clinic. Birthday cards were sent out. Those pleasantries seem to have diminished, however, since the center was bought and flipped to Sun Partners. Scheduling seems to have improved on the first floor.
As for me, I had a great deal of experience with hospitals and death as a boy and young man, so I have avoided seeing doctors ever since. When I do go in for checkups, I try to get the first appointments before the buses arrive with patients. I also try to avoid referral to specialists all over the county as that would take all day of riding around in buses and corralled with herds of patients in waiting rooms.
I pay over a hundred a month for my Medicare Advantage plan. If it were not for the extremely expensive blood tests, I would save money dropping that type of insurance, which I got the first time because it gives more latitude for traveling, something I never do anyway. I am “poor” so I could probably get Medicaid with food and all that.
This time, after waiting 2 and 1/2 hours on the second floor of Alton Road center to see Doctor Shot, as Dr. Abinader the rheumatologist is called, I finally left, advising the desk to give my appointment to the poor old man with lots of pain. My own right hand and arm was in pain but not too bad.
Now I had waited months to see this good doctor. They take their own sweet time, and, obviously, persons showing up and being seen long after I arrived meant they were put ahead of me. It is as if patients are there to serve the clinic instead of vice versa. A staff member was giving a speech in Spanish to everyone in the waiting room about a function to be held in the building next door. I do not speak Spanish so I wondered in English if this is how it is in Cuba. I always wanted to visit Cuba because I like Cubans. A clerk at the CVS cursed me the other day for living in Miami Beach for so long without learning Spanish.
I went downstairs and said I wanted to make a complaint for the delays common to the upstairs clinic. They said there was no general manager available, that the head doctor, Dr. Domenigo, had sold the clinic and then it was sold again so and they don't know who is in charge or what company owns it. No wonder he had not answered my letter about the situation at the clinic before he resigned as chairman. It was probably thrown away by the mystery manager, “Connie.”
TO BE CONTINUED
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