UNM SENIOR HEALTH CLINIC IS TOXIC
I have received my health care from University of New Mexico for about the last 25 years, with the exception of some specialists I've chosen outside that network. Recently, I had a horrible experience at the Senior Health Center clinic that makes me afraid for the welfare of other disabled and elderly patients.
A number of the staff are cold, unfriendly and uncompassionate. Some are downright mean and overbearing, then they gaslight the patient by pretending SHE is the problem. They will even lie to their supervisors if, in the process of the patient trying to get her needs met, it becomes apparent that the staff have behaved unkindly, meanly, or slackly.
We cannot say that ALL the people in any one institution behave in any one particular manner. There are lovely people at this clinic, both front office and back office, but the presence of even just 3 or 4 people, whose feelings and/or behavior towards the disabled and/or elderly run in the TOXIC vein, can poison the atmosphere and damage the wellbeing of patients.
There are many ways to communicate to the patient that you don't care about their welfare. For example, take this scenario from the experience of a wheelchair bound disabled lady who is also half blind: This disabled 70 year-old woman has no children or husband, and their contemporaries are themselves sick or dying, so the patient is isolated. The patient keeps telling the staff that transportation is a serious issue, but the clinic, without notice to the patient, cancels a necessary appointment, and the patient only finds out about it accidently. But when the patient discovers that her appointment has vanished, she is told by 3 staff members that she never HAD that appointment to begin with, which is not true. (There is documentation on the website.) Then she is told that the appointment WAS cancelled, but that the person who cancelled it just decided to cancel it on her own because the clerk imagined that the patient probably did not need it. The only thing anyone will do is give the patient an appointment time that she cannot physically attend at 8 IN THE MORNING!
This patient calls and speaks to 5 or 6 people and also tries writing messages in the portal, communicating each time her disabilities, her isolation and her limited transportation resources. No one says to her any version of, "I'm sorry this is happening, give me "X" amount of time to fix it for you." Instead, they just present her with the impossible appointment at the impossible time. It is clear that no one wants to bother with her. They tell her there are no appointments to be had, and she is out of luck.
The patient tries to go up the administrative ladder.
The social worker gives her an appointment, but patient shortly learns that this appointment time is reserved for surgical patients and the social worker was wrong to give it, so they take away that appointment, and she is back at the beginning again.
In response to a written request that someone CALL the patient, a nurse sends patient a message on the patient portal with an appointment that is a week too late for the patient to stay current on her medications.
So the patient speaks to the office manager (who she mistakenly thinks is the clinic director) and the office manager interrupts her just a few words into the patient's first sentence and starts lecturing the patient about how it was THE PATIENT'S FAULT because she wrongly thinks the patient herself cancelled the first appointment. She won't stop lecturing the patient or let her speak.
Finally, patient gives up, hangs up, and calls the Patient Advocate's office, and tells her what has happened.
At first, it seems resolved, when the clinic director calls the patient, and gives her an accessible time. Patient is relieved and grateful, & thanks the woman.
But when the patient shows up for her appointment, her doctor & the clinic director, with loud voices and angry faces, barge into the room and immediately start upbraiding her, claiming she has "caused them a big problem" because she SUPPOSEDLY called the staff "stupid" and was "rude" to them, which is A HUGE LIE. Patient has never told someone they were "stupid." She was upset, not "rude."
They knew this patient had PTSD, for which she was treated by a different doctor at that clinic, yet these women verbally assaulted the patient while she was alone with them, trapped in a wheelchair in a distant exam room down a long hallway. This is a breach of ethics and is traumatic and harmful to the patient. Even if the staff had NOT lied to protect their jobs and the patient had gotten snippy with them in response to their unkindness, verbal assault by staff would never have been appropriate.
I have received medical care at UNM for more than 20 years & I am that patient. I will never go back to the Senior Health Clinic.