Before accepting Lemtrada treatment, I was asked to agree to monthly blood draws because Genzyme monitors patients for 48 months after infusions to screen for adverse effects (development of autoimmune responses). The costs and administration of the monthly screenings are borne by Genzyme, who to my understanding, chooses a company to make home and office visits to collect the samples for lab testing. Someone keeps dropping the ball.
The company I deal with directly for the draws hails out of Texas, and conducts services on contract. They hand off the assignment to their "branch offices" depending on the patient's locality. Per the Lemtrada agreement, they call the patient, schedule a date and time for a blood draw, then send a person out to collect the samples and send to a lab for testing and reporting to the physician's office.
They have in the past five months bungled four appointments. The branch that was initially assigned to me had some kind of personnel apocalypse wherein people resigned, replacements were hired and trained, then quit, or something. Missed and had to reschedule two collection appointments that way, with much back and forth telephone conversations with people either uninformed about developments as they happened or just willfully dense.
Subsequent fumbles resulted in the Texas people reassigning collections to a branch closer to me and removed from the typical high traffic area of the nearest city (I'm kinda rural). First replacement appointment is scheduled to take place twice in one month, presumably to make up for the calendar obligations of a collection every thirty days. Well, they missed that goal and scheduled two draws in one month. This morning was supposed to be the second draw of the month to make up for a missed draw last month in which I received notification that the samples waited too long to be tested or arrived too late to be tested and were invalid and needed to be resubmitted.
Jaysus. As nurses say, I'm a hard stick because my veins are deep, tiny, and roll. I have one really good vein and it's been getting a real workout for the last twelve years, and they're trying to blow that one.
This morning I called the main office of this company to report that the person scheduled to make the blood draw this morning never showed up. The case manager I spoke with agreed to call me back on my home phone number as soon as she had an explanation for what happened and to reschedule. Ten minutes later one of her underlings called me on my cell phone wanting to, in her words, schedule a blood draw. Not "reschedule," but, "schedule," like it was a completely new call and unrelated to the conversation I had just had with her supervisor. I lost my cool and went off on her for the hot potato case management and lack of effective communications in her office. Typical miscommunication/overhandling of communications/falling all over each other stuff. I flat out refused an additional draw and told them to explain it to my physician's office, which is none too happy with the service anyway. My neuro was griping about them at my last visit.
I wish I could track down whoever made the decision to engage this company's "services" so I could tell them how incompetent this company is, but there are layers upon layers of beurocracy involved, which makes me wish to slap someone into next Tuesday. I have offered to pay for my own blood draws because at least THAT would be reliable. These people couldn't find their own behind with a handful of razor blades.
I am now looking for an email address to my neuro's office so I can entertain them with a more colorful description than this website allows. Fight the power, people.
The company I deal with directly for the draws hails out of Texas, and conducts services on contract. They hand off the assignment to their "branch offices" depending on the patient's locality. Per the Lemtrada agreement, they call the patient, schedule a date and time for a blood draw, then send a person out to collect the samples and send to a lab for testing and reporting to the physician's office.
They have in the past five months bungled four appointments. The branch that was initially assigned to me had some kind of personnel apocalypse wherein people resigned, replacements were hired and trained, then quit, or something. Missed and had to reschedule two collection appointments that way, with much back and forth telephone conversations with people either uninformed about developments as they happened or just willfully dense.
Subsequent fumbles resulted in the Texas people reassigning collections to a branch closer to me and removed from the typical high traffic area of the nearest city (I'm kinda rural). First replacement appointment is scheduled to take place twice in one month, presumably to make up for the calendar obligations of a collection every thirty days. Well, they missed that goal and scheduled two draws in one month. This morning was supposed to be the second draw of the month to make up for a missed draw last month in which I received notification that the samples waited too long to be tested or arrived too late to be tested and were invalid and needed to be resubmitted.
Jaysus. As nurses say, I'm a hard stick because my veins are deep, tiny, and roll. I have one really good vein and it's been getting a real workout for the last twelve years, and they're trying to blow that one.
This morning I called the main office of this company to report that the person scheduled to make the blood draw this morning never showed up. The case manager I spoke with agreed to call me back on my home phone number as soon as she had an explanation for what happened and to reschedule. Ten minutes later one of her underlings called me on my cell phone wanting to, in her words, schedule a blood draw. Not "reschedule," but, "schedule," like it was a completely new call and unrelated to the conversation I had just had with her supervisor. I lost my cool and went off on her for the hot potato case management and lack of effective communications in her office. Typical miscommunication/overhandling of communications/falling all over each other stuff. I flat out refused an additional draw and told them to explain it to my physician's office, which is none too happy with the service anyway. My neuro was griping about them at my last visit.
I wish I could track down whoever made the decision to engage this company's "services" so I could tell them how incompetent this company is, but there are layers upon layers of beurocracy involved, which makes me wish to slap someone into next Tuesday. I have offered to pay for my own blood draws because at least THAT would be reliable. These people couldn't find their own behind with a handful of razor blades.
I am now looking for an email address to my neuro's office so I can entertain them with a more colorful description than this website allows. Fight the power, people.
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