{"id":15302,"date":"2025-12-12T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/patients-deserve-better-than-this\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:33:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:33:46","slug":"patients-deserve-better-than-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/patients-deserve-better-than-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Patients deserve better than this"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=3ba4ce41-a358-5d9b-b360-ebd942a1f4df&#038;function=cover&#038;type=preview&#038;source=false&#038;width=2000\" width=\"1680\" height=\"958\" alt=\"\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>With abdominal pain and rectal bleeding, my friend went to the Cortez ER. She was sent home. Still in pain, she went to the Mercy ER the next day. She had such a large intestinal blockage that it even obstructed her urinary tract \u2013 and she was in surgery that night.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, I had a leaky-eyelid surgery scheduled four to five weeks in advance, for a Monday. The Tuesday before, the office called to confirm the date, but that Friday afternoon the hospital called to say the surgery was canceled because they hadn\u2019t received insurance authorization from the doctor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, I called the office and (of course) had to leave a voicemail. Later, they called back to say they hadn\u2019t noticed that my VA authorization said \u201coptometry\u201d instead of \u201cophthalmology,\u201d so they would need to reschedule \u2013 but the doctor was booked until March.<\/p>\n<p>All these health care employees are in fairly reliable, decently paid positions. Why don\u2019t they do their jobs?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Leslie M. Orr<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-be497c9460b6bb03d915ad399c0dbc12\">Mancos<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With abdominal pain and rectal bleeding, my friend went to the Cortez ER. She was sent home. Still in pain, she went to the Mercy ER the next day. She had such a large intestinal blockage that it even obstructed her urinary tract \u2013 and she was in surgery that night. On the other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15302"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19585,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15302\/revisions\/19585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15302"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}