Feeling the need for exercise, which Brian wasn’t getting, he literally ran to the hospital. The face mask made it a bit more difficult, but he was willing to put up with it. As he entered through the front entrance into the marbled lobby, one of the women behind the information desk called his name. With as much time as he’d been spending at the hospital on a daily basis, he was becoming a known commodity.
“Mr. Murphy! Harriet Berenson would like to see you,” one of the pink-smocked ladies said.
“Who is Harriet Berenson?” he questioned. He was moderately out of breath, even though it had only been a little more than a week since he and Emma had done their daily mini-triathlons.
“She’s one of our discharge planners. Her office is on the second floor.”
Brian was taken aback. He never even knew there was such a position as a discharge planner. And why would a discharge planner want to talk with him — unless they were thinking of discharging Emma? But how could that be, particularly with her developing a new, alarming symptom? After hesitating for a moment to decide whether to go up to Emma’s floor first or visit Harriet Berenson, the latter won out. He needed to know sooner rather than later if there was even talk of Emma being discharged. The idea of having to take care of her at home terrified him.
“Ah, yes,” Harriet said once he had made it to her office. She picked up one of the folders on her desk and opened it. “Emma Murphy is to be discharged today. I want to arrange for post-hospital services.”
“My wife cannot be discharged,” Brian stated simply. As far as he was concerned, she was hardly capable of even basic functions. “That’s not going to work. Our house is ill-equipped to handle her needs. I’m not even sure she can climb a flight of stairs in her condition and the bedrooms are upstairs.”
“That’s good to know,” Harriet said. “That’s what I am here for: to make sure your wife gets the care she requires. We can certainly arrange for extended care in a nursing home.”
“But she’s developed some difficulty walking,” he argued. “And it’s getting worse.”
“Do you think a rehabilitation hospital would be a better solution?”
“I don’t know,” Brian stammered. “I hadn’t given it any thought. I certainly didn’t think she was ready to be discharged. She’s still symptomatic from the EEE virus. In fact, she still has a fever as far as I know.”
“That’s not what Dr. Kathrine Graham thinks,” Harriet countered. “She wrote the discharge order this morning.”
“Who is Dr. Graham?” Brian asked. He’d never heard the name.
“She is our Chief Medical Officer here.”
“Does Dr. Shirley Raymond know that my wife is to be discharged?” He had briefly seen Dr. Raymond around noon the day before, and she’d not mentioned anything.
“I’m sure she does,” Harriet said. “As I said, Dr. Graham is our CMO. If your wife needs help regaining strength for things like walking, a rehabilitation hospital would be the proper choice, no doubt. How does the Hudson Valley Rehabilitation Hospital sound to you? It’s in Hudson Heights, so it’s close by, and it is an excellent facility. We send a lot of our patients there.”
“I guess it sounds better than a nursing home,” Brian assented. A rehabilitation hospital sounded decent, but he was hardly enthusiastic.
“Okay, then I’ll get right on it,” Harriet said. “I know Hudson Valley has room because I placed someone there just yesterday. Now, I was told that you must see Roger Dalton right after talking with me. Do you know where his office is located?”
“I do.” He didn’t like the idea of seeing Roger Dalton again. He’d not spoken to the man since their less than personable visit a week ago and, from Brian’s perspective, it was better to let sleeping dogs lie in regard to the outstanding, humongous ED bill. Yet now that there was a possibility of Emma being discharged, it probably wasn’t avoidable.
Leaving Harriet’s office, he briefly debated whether to see Dalton first or check in on Emma. Reluctantly, he decided it best to get the Dalton meeting out of the way, as he might find it difficult to leave Emma if she became upset about being discharged. Using the stairs, Brian descended to the first floor and entered the administration area.
With Roger Dalton, Brian wasn’t so lucky as he’d been with Miss Berenson. Not only was there someone in the man’s office, but there was another individual waiting to see him, too. At least the wait gave him a chance to think about Emma’s discharge. He still did not like the idea, but he admitted he knew nothing about the Hudson Valley Rehab Hospital other than approximately where it was. Being that it was rehab hospital, maybe Emma would get more attention, but the uncertainty bothered him, as he didn’t know what to expect going forward.
When Brian finally walked into Dalton’s office and sat, he thought he was prepared for whatever the man was going to say, but he wasn’t, especially since the meeting started out on the wrong foot.
“I thought you were going to get back to me about the outstanding Emergency Department bill?” Roger said with a definite accusatory tone.
“I was planning on it,” Brian said in his defense. “I have applied for a review of the decision to deny the claim, and I’ve been waiting for a response.”
“You got your response,” Roger spat. “You were informed the claim again had been denied by email yesterday. I know because I’d resubmitted the claim when I hadn’t heard from you.”
For a brief moment Brian let his eyes drift away from Roger’s masked face as a minor flash of anger consumed him. He’d developed a distaste for this bureaucrat on their last meeting and his current holier-than-thou attitude was reminding him why.
“I suppose you are going to tell me you didn’t see the email,” Roger continued derogatorily.
After a short pause to control himself, Brian said: “You are correct. I have yet to see that particular email from Peerless. As it is, I’ve been busy trying to help my wife, who is not doing all that well. Is the ED bill the reason you asked to see me?”
“No, it is not,” Roger snapped.
“Well, perhaps you can tell me what it is then.”
“I’m afraid I have more bad news for you. When I was informed yesterday by our Chief Medical Officer that your wife was going to be discharged, I put together a preliminary hospital bill. Because we have had a history of such bad luck with Peerless Health, I wanted to get it to them ASAP. Well, my efforts were rewarded with Peerless informing us that they will not be covering any of the currently estimated $161,942.98 in-house bill, either.”
For a few moments of stunned silence, Brian’s mind tried to wrap itself around two incredible facts: the sheer size of the in-house hospital bill and the idea that a health insurance company would contend it wasn’t going to be involved with a sick patient’s required care. He didn’t know which was more outrageous.
“What am I supposed to gather from your silence, Mr. Murphy?” Roger demanded. “We have a major problem here. Frankly, we as an institution are finding it very difficult dealing with these short-term insurance policy companies, especially since they have proliferated during this coronavirus pandemic with people losing their employer-based coverage.”
“More than one hundred and sixty thousand dollars is a big bill,” Brian managed to say, thinking out loud as he tried to conceive of such a number.