Brian,
Yes it's "Homicide; Life on the Streets". Thanks so much.
Bert,
Now let me ask you guys something. Nancy is a solo just like you guys and her call partner is a solo with a mid-level. Basically the two women always cover for themselves except if one is totally out of town and even then most of the time they get their own calls thru the cells and answering systems; so we practicelly never answer eachothers calls. Recently Laura went to a big seminar for her EMR and so she was out of touch for a bit and we covered for a few hours here and there while she was in the air basically.
But we do some decent patient education here and so Nancy probably doesn't get more than a handful of calls a week. Sometimes days without any and then possibly a few on any given day, so it's not such a big deal except those few times some new patient needs to be "taught" the ropes might we say. A few needy, or manipulative ones here and there, but for the most part this is one of the few bright spots in our practice.
Things were much worse when she was in a big group and the two docs from each of the two boxes in her zone had to take call for one another. Some of those patients from the other box were just unreal. There were a lot of calls on those weekends especially. Now as a solo with well "educated" patients most nights are quite acceptable. We do hand out a two sided thing that explains a lot of things and we have signs up in the waiting and exam rooms that remind folks to call ahead of time fo refills and the like with a statement from her old partner at the big practice: "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine", with a picture of a guy with his hands to his face screaming... Quite effective, really.
So are you patients less "eduacted"? And might that be the large number of Maineciad patients you are dealing with? Hope you had a good restful holiday my friends....
