Mass General may be a world class hospital...

...but their attention to patients after discharge leaves something to be desired. I was supposed to see a neurosurgeon 4 weeks after discharge from the hospital. The appointment was actually made for 5 weeks after discharge, and it was supposed to be last week. It was cancelled by the doc due to emergencies, a perfectly valid reason. As you know if you've read my blog entry from last week, my replacement appointment was another two weeks out (since the doc only has office hours one day a week!), and I wasn't too happy about the delay. Today I almost went through the roof when I listened to a phone message from the doc's office after I got home from my morning at my own office. That message said that my new appointment was scheduled for August 12th, and that if I had problems and needed to be seen before that I should go to the emergency room at MGH. As it turns out, the doc's office made a mistake and somehow scheduled two appointments for me, so I'm still on for late next week. That's a relief to me. And although they don't know it, I'm sure it's also a relief for the doc's office because I was definitely not going to accept a change from an appointment on July 1st (the originally scheduled time) to August 12th without making some noise and complaining to the hospital and anywhere else I could figure out that made sense.