Here's what I think. If you go the the emergency room, the hospital should not be allowed to - three months later - send you fundraising appeals that start out:
Going to the hospital is never fun.
But we hope that when you came to [redacted] Hospital, you received top-notch care close to home and you found the Hospital to be a warm, caring place where you were treated with respect.
Because that right there? That solicitation violates the tenets of separation of church and state, and the bright line between advertising and editorial. It's an invasion of my privacy. It's completely improper and wrong. The fundraisers should not know who the patients are. It's like ambulance chasing.
Besides, I'm broke, because that little trip to the emergency room cost me something in excess of $5,000, thank you very much.
Update: Apparently this is legal under HIPAA. But that doesn't make it right.
4 comments:
Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital committed gross negligence on my dad post op brain surgery. As a result, he spent the last two years of his life needing full time round the clock care. MSK continued to send me fundraising letters for years. Last year I finally had enough and I shared my deep feelings on their fundraising letter using a sharpie marker and returned it to them. Haven't heard from them since.
Dumb, and invasive. Hope you get no more❤
Susan Rubin, that's a horribly story and I'm so sorry to hear of what you and your family went through.
Magpie, fund raising letters are annoying in the first place. To get one after you've already "donated" $5k is just adding fuel to the fire.
This is not funny, but your reaction strikes me as funny because you have that urban expectation of privacy. Someone from a small town has no such expectation; this would not even strike me as unusual, anymore.
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