Dora had success
I got an email from my friend, Dora. She moved to Germantown (the Philadelphia neighborhood where I live) from an outlying area, so changed doctors to be closer to home. She’s younger than I am, and doesn’t have the same hangups about phoning, so she called around.
She called a place in Germantown (I’ll have to get the name from her) and they told her that they have experience with deaf patients and asked if she needed an interpreter for the appointment. This is the way it’s supposed to be! A medical office gets a call from a deaf patient and asks if they need an interpreter, not the rigamarole I normally get where the receptionist tells me they don’t provide interpreters.
But when I was looking for Betty’s new doctor, nothing came up in Germantown, so they must not accept Keystone 65 insurance.
Followup on doctor
I’m catching up. Over Christmas, first Betty got sick with a bad cold, then she gave it to me. Now, it’s the middle of January and I’m still catching up with everything that I didn’t do while making Xmas gifts and recovering from our colds.
We both like Betty’s new doctor. He has a practice where it’s just him and his wife operating from an office in their home. I told him about all the troubles I’ve had with doctors ignoring me; and problems finding out how to get an interpreter for Betty’s appointments; and the resolution, that Keystone 65 gave me a number to call to request the interpreter myself for any appointment. He was glad that Medicare/Keystone 65 pays for the interpreter and was honest– with the amount of debt he has he can’t pay for interpreters himself from the practice. And I believe him. Which is why I’m not putting his name on here.
He renewed all of Betty’s medication, and she’s back on the Lovastatin. We have an appointment for next week where he’ll take blood for the test to see if her cholesterol is going down (he takes it himself, doesn’t make us take a separate trip to a lab, how nice!). We’ll go from there. So far, things look good.
