1 /5 Richard St. DuBois: I came in yesterday to seek some assistance from Dr Russaks office for my clients family who are interested in hospice for Dad. I approached Tiffany at the front desk, and explained how theres not much on the Kaisers site for Kaisers hospice services, and weve tried a number of advertised phone numbers in Kaisers member services systems and resulted with no real answer. Before reaching Dr Russaks office, the family printed out and brought in a Kaiser checklist on how to evaluate a hospice program, and to speak with the doctor or nursing staff. Tiffany unfortunately was apathetic, and did not want to review the Kaiser article the family printed out. Instead, she began to write three numbers down to contact the Geriatric appointment line, Hospice line and a Hospice liaison line. As she was writing this down we noticed it was an out of County area code, and so while she explained that everything stems from their LA location, we attempted again to refer to the Kaiser print out about speaking with someone on the care team. Seeming to be fed up with us, she borderline rudely says Im not going to go pull out the nursing staff to answer some questions while theyre with patients.
We never asked her to do that, and since she brought up the idea of speaking with nursing staff, we asked if there is a right time and place to speak with them.
Apathetically, "I dont know, this is what they tell me to give patients, you can try to call and make an appointment with the doctor." She disengages with eye contact, turns head slightly and gazes at her computer screen, appearing to get back to her work.
Not once did Tiffany even consider the consequence of our conversation. For heavens sake, we are looking for a sick, older person to find an end of life care solution to his current pain and suffering, and have been having trouble finding information as to how to connect with Kaiser hospice, so we came into a facility for a better answer. What a disappointing experience.
