My youths at Covenant House are constantly waiting. When they do not have health insurance, they wait for hours at the welfare office to apply for New Jersey Medicaid. If (and that is a very uncertain if) they are approved for Medicaid, they have to wait about a month to get their insurance card. After they receive their card, the next appointment at a doctor’s office or a hospital clinic is often months away. On the day of the appointment they have to tediously sit in the waiting room, often times for hours, and wait to have their name called. When they do not qualify for Medicaid, the procedures and steps to gain access to care become even more complicated and tiring. While patience is often thought of as a virtue, this continuous and frequent waiting my youths have to endure is a reflection of how broken our healthcare system is for the most vulnerable of populations. They should not have to wait so long. They should not have to give the little patience that they do have to a health care system that seemingly tries to exclude them.
I recently accompanied one of my girls to get her wisdom teeth removed at the University Hospital in Newark. After her oral surgery consult, we were asked to return at 8am on the day of her surgery with the knowledge that it was “first come, first serve.” We arrived at 7:45am and congratulated ourselves for being so responsible for not only arriving on-time but ahead of time. Little did we know, another patient was told to arrive at 7:30am that day. The doors to the clinic only opened at 8am and the first patient was seen at 9am when the doctor actually arrived. We waited for three hours for her to be called for an hour surgery. At the end of the surgery the surgeon told us only two teeth could be removed and she would have to return (and wait some more) for the other two teeth. While my youth was in surgery, I sat in the waiting room. I noticed the blank stares of the people in the dental clinic’s full but often silent waiting room. Many people were in serious pain and missed a day of work to hopefully be the 30 patients the dental clinic saw on that dreaded first come, first serve basis. In contrast, I recently took another one of my youth to a get a physical. After waiting for an hour to see the nurse practitioner, she cursed and yelled at me for wasting her time. While I tried to calmly explain why she needed to wait to get a physical in order to stay at Covenant House, I realized I preferred her energetic anger compared to the indifferent faces of apathy in the dental clinic.
Can we hold the hospitals, clinics and often times their curt and unaccommodating workers responsible for our health care system’s inefficient and ineffective procedures? I don’t know if that would be fair. Public hospitals are overrun with clients who have nowhere else to go. People do not show up for their appointments because of various barriers including transportation, work schedules or family life. Hospitals and clinics have no other choice but to ask clients to arrive way ahead of their appointments, ask them to take a day out of work to see a doctor and only see them on a first come, first serve basis. I think about how to help my youths use the energy of their anger and channel it to something productive. As opposed to swearing and yelling at me or their doctors, I want to teach them to advocate for themselves. I want to help my youth use their anger to demand change from our healthcare system. I want them to understand that they are valuable citizens who deserve quality and efficient health care.