Blue Phonorrhea

By law, we have to provide translation services out of our own pocket to any patient that does not speak engligh fluently. Since most of the patients who need the phones are also illegals we are paying for their care also out of our pocket. Anyway. Because you have to have a translator available at all times and there are so many illegals, the hospital went and got these blue phones. They have two handpieces. You pick up one handpiece and that patient picks up the other. It automatically calls an interpreter who then translates. This way you can comply with the governments unfunded mandate yet again. So, today on rounds I had to see eleven patients who had these phones. Of course all were illeagals. Each time you pick up the phone, there is a connection fee and then so much per minute. Of course the pateint's love them and use them to complain about everything. The average cost per patient per day is $212. Since the patients dont pay for it, the cost is of course passed on to others which eventually is the docs and the taxpayers.

As I made my way around the hospital, the blue phones there everywhere. They are only brought into the rooms of the patients who dont speak english. Suddenly, I was called stat to the ED. I had to explain to this MS-13 hombre that he needed to go to the OR asap. There was no translator, so I asked for one of those D+++ phones. I was told that we were out of them. I said "what do you mean, we have 160 of them!". The answer was that they were all in use, there were over 45 in use just in Labor and Delivery!

People wonder why healthcare is so exensive, somebody has to pay to take care of all the illegals and their mandated phones!