He Has What?!

Not Igor, but kinda looks like him

Ever hear of the HIPAA laws? Enacted in 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a complicated piece of legislation that was designed primarily to protect health insurance coverage for workers when they change or lose their jobs. One provision in the bill is the so-called "privacy rule". Simply stated, it prevents health care providers from discussing a patient's case with just about anyone without jumping through myriad hoops or dealing with yards and yards of red tape. A doctor needing access to a patient's chart, for example, must first sign away his firstborn. While privacy is perhaps a good thing, the HIPAA laws take what was originally a valid concept and carry it to such a ridiculous extreme as to make it completely unworkable. I bring this up because of something that happened during my third stay at Mt. Sinai. After the transesophageal whatever I was transported back to my room. My roommate, Mr. Morgan, was in middle of ordering dinner. Mr. Morgan seemed like a very nice, albeit reticent man. Anytime I tried to strike up a conversation with him, I got no response. When they wheeled me back into my room, however, I noticed a sign on the door for first time: "BED A is hearing impaired". Aha! So he wasn't being antisocial or anti-semitic or anti-anything...he was just being deaf! So anyway, the dietician was asking him what dessert he wanted. The conversation went something like this: "Do you want chocolate ice cream again?" "Say again?" DO YOU WANT CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM?" "One more time?" "DO YOU WANT CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM FOR DESSERT??" And so it went. The next day three doctors came in and had a chat with Mr. Morgan. HIPAA laws notwithstanding, they were, of course, loud enough for me to hear. Hell, they probably heard them in the lobby! One sentence was enough to scare the dickens out of me. "Mr. Morgan", they said, "We hope your hearing will improve once we treat your meningitis." Say what? He has menin-freakin'-gitis?? Do these neanderthals not know that when one is on Prednisone, one's immune system is most likely compromised?? I was livid. I stormed out to the nurses station (you may have already guessed that I'm something of a habitual stormer) and demanded an explanation. The nurse in charge, after looking at me like I had two heads, informed me that she was not allowed to discuss the diagnosis or condition or favorite color of another patient with me. HIPAA laws and all that, you see. I said if I died as a result of being assigned a highly contagious roomie while having a total of about four white blood cells, not only would I make sure that my estate sued the bastards, but I would come back to haunt the sixth floor in perpetuity. Lucky for me, my nurse that day was a very nice, very helpful chassidic guy named Igor. He happened to be passing by and heard my rather heated exchange with Nurse Ratched. He whispered to me that he'd look into it. A few minutes later he came back and informed me that there were several different types of meningitis and assured me that the one from which Mr. Morgan was suffering was not contagious; I was in no danger. About ten minutes after I went back to my room the Administrative Nurse came to see me and reiterated (is there such a word as "iterate"?) what Igor told me. Everything was fine. They were aware of my condition, Dr. DePalo was aware of everything they did, and I had no need to worry. I asked her if she had ever heard of a hospital making a mistake. She said yes. It was supposed to be a rhetorical question.

Not Igor, either; pronounces his name "Eye-gor"