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Screw John Jay, Bwog is coming here for medical treatment in the future.
Students across all undergraduate schools often complain about one problematic aspect of the institution: the medical services. Sometimes it’s impossible to get an appointment. Other times the treatment of sick students is dismissive or rude. And with frightening frequency, the information distributed to patients is contradictory or just plain wrong. One Columbia student recently had an experience at John Jay Medical Services that may go down in history… or infamy.
It’s 3 PM on a Friday afternoon and you’re really, really sick. You don’t know what exactly is going on with your body—two weeks ago you felt a small tingling in your sinuses and now you can’t breathe. A deep, scratchy cough escapes your lungs every so often, and as you gasp for air, the cold New York wind just further agitates your congested chest. You sit down on a bench in front of the John Jay quad, your hands instinctively massaging your temples, your forehead, the bridge of your nose—anything to relieve the deep ache of constant sinus pressure. You sneeze violently and yellow mucus coats your hands. That isn’t normal.
You’re sick, and it fucking blows.
Two paths seem to diverge in front of you. You’re getting help, you’ve already established that point. Why wait any longer? Midterms are approaching, and you don’t want to add (more) stress to your already infected body. No, you need some good old fashioned antibiotics, but what can you do?
1) John Jay Medical Services: the Rational Route
John Jay Medical Services looms in front of you, just a few flights up the stairs. This is what you pay for, right? Out of the $60,000 a year which you are allegedly supposed to pay for the privilege of coming to Columbia, some of that moolah is appropriated for cases just like this. But you know the burden walk-ins put on Medical Services, so you decide to call in to try and actually make an appointment.
The nice nurse on the phone tells you the next spot available for an appointment is next week. But this is an emergency. You need immediate medical treatment for a chronic sickness that is significantly and negatively impacting your life. Sorry, she tells you, the best she advice she can give is to just walk in and wish for the best.
Okay, calling didn’t work, how about the internet registration system? You load up the health portal, select same-day appointment, and punch in any information that could possibly help your treatment. You’re told there are no open spots, sorry. Okay, you think, how about making an appointment in the future? You redo the entire health form, making sure this is an appointment for your sinus issues and not for a pregnancy test, an IUD, or contraception. Sorry, the portal explains, all appointment slots until May have been filled.
Well, shit.
It’s time for the inevitable. After 30 minutes outside John Jay, trying in any way you can to not just walk in, you gather up your belongings and hope for the best. You fill out the little card the nurse at the front desk hands you and slide over to the waiting room.
You wait. It’s been another 30 minutes and your phone is now running low on battery. Between ragged breaths you decide to never smoke again, in the hopes that you’ll never end up here in the future. You wait longer. Another 30 minutes pass, and you abandon your now useless technology. The waiting room is like a small box: no windows to the outside, no clock—you’re trapped. You wait even longer. Finally—two hours after deciding to get help at John Jay—a surprisingly peppy nurse calls out your name and directs you to an empty examination room.
She takes all your information and puts it into the system. You speed through the questions, hoping this is just the prelude to a doctor’s examination, something you desperately need to figure out what, exactly, is wrong with you. The nurse leaves, promising somebody will be in shortly. You’ve already waited hours, so you can wait a little longer if it means regaining your health. Another nurse walks in and introduces herself. Oh, you think, it’s an RN not a doctor. Whatever. They can both give prescriptions, right? That’s all that matters.
You list off the symptoms of your sickness and what you think you may be suffering from. The RN listens carefully, writing some notes down as you speak. She presses some keys, looks at you, and offers codeine. Uh, what? It’ll help with the cough, she says. Codeine…isn’t that the drug those three kids overdosed on in your middle school bathroom? No, thanks. You just tell her you need some antibiotics. She seems almost disappointed as she prints out a simple amoxicillin script and sends you out of the examination room.
It took almost 3 hours stuck in one of Columbia’s worst buildings, but you made it through with your prescription. You wonder if John Jay Medical Services was truly the best place to go to, though. Oh well.
2) St. Luke’s Emergency Room: the Wildcard Route
Screw John Jay. You’ve already had horrible experiences in that hellhole, waiting hours for assembly line medical care, and you’re not about to add bureaucratic suffering to your already sickness-wracked mind and body. The next best place is St. Luke’s ER. It’s definitely an out-of-the-box move, but Emergency Rooms exist for emergency treatment, right? You gather up your stuff and head down Amsterdam towards 114th.
You enter the ER and head towards the front desk. They ask for your reason of visit and an ID, nothing too crazy for a public ER. But in the haze of your sickness, you’ve forgotten your wallet—which has both your ID and insurance card—in Carman. You tell the nurse at the front desk you’ll be back in a second because you forgot your wallet, but he doesn’t let you leave. You explain you’ll be back in literally five seconds, but he doesn’t let you leave. Weird.
Now kind of confused, you receive a medical wrist band are told to stand just to the side. You’re used to waiting at John Jay, so the prospect of a wait in a public ER for upwards of a couple hours—especially with a simple sinus infection—doesn’t shock you. But not more than five minutes later, you’re corralled into an examination room.
A doctor—MD and all—warmly introduces himself and listens to your symptoms. He writes down a few notes, presses a few keys on a computer in the room, and prints out a prescription. But he says not to leave yet, they’ll give you some immediate medicine for congestion relief. Is this medical heaven? How is this even possible without your ID or insurance card? You quickly request a picture of your insurance card from a parent, knowing you’ll need it before you leave. You gotta pay for the treatment somehow, right?
After 10 minutes, you’ve exited the Emergency Room with a prescription, immediate treatment, and quality service. Although you entered without your ID or wallet—St. Luke’s doesn’t take venmo, apparently—a quick picture of your insurance card propels you through the hospital bureaucracy. It’s been less than an hour since you entered St. Luke’s, but you wonder just what your experience would have been at John Jay Medical Services in comparison.
How were you supposed to know it’s easier to get treatment at St. Luke’s without a wallet, ID, or insurance card than to receive any treatment, ever, at Medical Services?
Quality over quantity via Columbia Spectator
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10 Comments
@CC '16 Yeah, I waited 9 hours with severe unexplained vomiting, confusion, and a headache causing 9/10 pain to see a medical professional at St. Lukes. They didn’t diagnose or treat me even though I was there upwards of 12 hours and I left too confused and in too much pain to find my dorm (I was a first year at the time). So your experience is not exactly typical.
Oh, and for this pleasure, which literally gave me post traumatic stress, I was charged thousands of dollars despite a total lack of actual medical care
Fuck St Lukes, is what I’m saying.
@Yikes I have no idea how this story happened, but congrats on lucking up and going at the exact right time without a wait, I guess. I went in to St. Luke’s with a suspected kidney infection and literally waited for 4 hours for even a couple of tylenol despite repeatedly describing my pain level as a 7/8. From what I know of the healthcare system my experience is much more representative than yours, and actually warranted the huge bill you’re about to get for your sinus infection. You also conveniently forgot to mention the $100 copay (for school Aetna coverage) on the spot when you left.
As others have commented, waltzing in for an easily treated problem wastes time and resources that are desperately needed for actual emergencies. There was absolutely no reason why a Nurse Practitioner wouldn’t be the best suited to treat your condition. If they think you need to see a doctor, they will tell you to see a doctor. She was right to prescribe the codeine and not the antibiotic, by the way – the 50% chance that your infection was bacterial and not viral doesn’t warrant the possible reduction in efficacy for that type of antibiotic, especially considering that given your lack of patience you’re unlikely to finish the dose anyways.
I completely agree that the John Jay system is inconvenient and needs addressing, but advocating flooding the emergency room instead is downright irresponsible.
@Anon E. Mouse I don’t doubt your experience, but it sure seems like an anomaly when I think about how generally inefficient their system usually is. It’s often packed, and I’ve heard many stories of how people wait in that ER for 4+ hours to be seen, and that often even patients admitted into the ER have to wait a long time inside (usually because they have major issues that need to be inspected by the resources that a hospital affords).
If the ER is busy, this strategy hurts you because you won’t get the quick run through the ER, and it hurts the ER by taxing their system and taking resources away from patients with more emergent situations. Using the ER as primary care is untenable as a long term and common option, generally, and as much as one may be upset about their experience with John Jay Health Services, I’d think the solution would be to help fix it instead of bailing for the local ER.
@CT This is the most entitled, ridiculous thought piece I’ve read in a while. Emergency Rooms are for emergencies…such as the gunshot wound described in the Spec article that you’ve peculiarly linked to at the bottom of this so-called article. If you’ve unsurprisingly ended up with a sinus infection after smoking your “Natural” American Spirt cigs outside of Butler in the freezing cold and you’re too snooty to talk to an RN at JJ (because your sniffles deserve extra special medical attention), go instead to a CityMD or other urgent care center. Don’t abuse the ER with your tales of “woe” and don’t encourage others to do so as well.
@Anon You’re a fucking hypochondriac, grow up.
@JJ You really should leave the ER for those with *actual emergencies* (i.e. I hit my head and it won’t stop bleeding). What would be more appropriate and way way faster is an Urgent Care Facility- there’s one literally every other block. I’ve been to City MD twice for strep throat and spent a total of 15 minutes there.
@JT Is there a down side to going to St. Luke’s? If this is a true story at St. Luke’s, I am never going to JJ Health Services again.
@User How much did the ER visit cost? I bet a ton. Its better to go to an urgent care center, like City MD, if its not too severe. It’s cheaper.
@Anonymous Yes. JJ is free, the ER you will get an enormous bill. Go to JJ or an urgent care. There is s bunch on Broadway.
@FF The downside is that you’re backing up ERs unnecessarily and taking away resources from those with legitimate emergencies. A sinus infection that sounds awfully like a common cold is definitely not a legitimate emergency that requires an ER.