My Personal Insulin Assistant

(In between my first shift tonight at the CCU and my boredom, I propose the following)

As a child I was always impressed by the amount of money the rich would spend on their watches. I always wondered how impressive would it be if, for the same amount of money, one would hire a personal “watch” assistant to travel along wherever he goes. Imagine this:

Frank: “Hey Joe what time is it?”
Joe: “I’m not sure, Watch?”
Watch (Well dressed male traveling alongside Joe): “At the sound of the beep it will be exactly 12:30 pm, beep”

Quite an impression wouldn’t you say?

Well, to my point.

The amount of money wasted on patients who are habitually non-compliant and miss their medical appointments and medications would stagger the general public if it was made known. The unnecessary hospitalizations, tests and man power are tremendous. Maybe it’s time that we change our approach.

A solution (for the worst offenders only): We hire a personal medication man who’s sole responsibility in life is to make sure these patients take their medication and come for clinic. He would take their fasting glucose twice a day and adjust their insulin. He would force them to take their Epivir or Lactulose, whatever.

We would pay well, say fifty thousand a year. Still, the savings would be tremendous. In addition, the psychological lift it would give these patients to have their own personal medication assistant would be great too and maybe next time they come to the hospital they might actually be pleasant.

I look forward to a future where Ms. C (my own personal patient nemesis) would come into my office (she would actually make it to the office and not the ER) with her own personal entourage. I would say:

Me: “Hi Ms. C, nice to see you today”
Ms. C: “And you too Dr.” (?????????????????)
Me: “How is your Diabetes”
Ms. C: “Well, why don’t you ask Richard, my diabetes assistant”
Me: “Richard, how’s her diabetes?”
Richard: “under control doc, we’re doing well”

Oh, Serenity.