Can I Make This Your Job?

Ah, people. If not for the people, working with people would be a great job.

ME: What happened today? 

MYSELF: People. 

ME: No kidding. 

CP: I had two stories cross my brain this week and they are amazingly related. 

MYSELF: Do tell. 

CP: We offer courtesy refills, MTMs, phone calls and text alerts to remind patients, or their caregivers to fill and pick up their medications. 

ME: Right. It's all about compliance. 

MYSELF: And STAR ratings. 

CP: Right. But as we al know, that's not quite good enough. Remember when I wrote a post, jokingly positing that the next evolution of healthcare would be to hire a person to go to patients' houses and watch them take their medications? 

ME: Yes. Then you said we should cut out the middleman and hire someone to simply TAKE patients' medications for them. 

MYSELF: So much easier. 

CP: I had a woman ask: "Can you make sure my mom takes her medications?". 

ME: Not sure how that would work. 

MYSELF: Especially since the adult daughter was picking them up for her. 

CP: This relates to the other story I have. A teacher I know had a student who was always late in the mornings. Despite repeated calls from the school about truancy, the child just could not make it to school on time. (Missed the bus, mom had to drive.)

ME: I can see where this is going. 

MYSELF: Me too. 

CP: One day the mother, tired of the calls and threats from truancy officers, came to visit the school. She asked the teacher if he could "have a talk with her child and make sure the child got on the bus to come to school so she didn't have to drive the child to school."

ME: Seriously? 

MYSELF: Your reply? 

CP: Look lady, we do everything we are obligated to do to get your kid to school. We pull a bus right up to the end of your driveway. We honk the horn. We turn around and go back down the street. I can't send the driver up to your door, even if you gave her a key, to enter your house, drag your kid out of bed, and throw the child in the bus. You'd probably complain about that too. 

ME: And the daughter who wants us to make sure her mom takes her medications? 

MYSELF: Probably the same thing. She probably wants us to have a key, drive over there three times a day, let ourselves in, and shove the medications down her mother's gullet. 

ME: That's called nurse, right? Or aide?

CP: And she would complain that we administered them with tepid tap water instead of slightly chilled bottled. There comes a time when people rely too much on others to do everything for them. It's great that we offer services to assist, but eventually reliance becomes dependence and the system crumbles. 

ME: I bet we'd get amazing STAR ratings though. 

MYSELF: Or arrested in both cases. 

CP: Prison can't be worse, than retail, right? 

ME: Well, orange is my favourite colour.