BTW, I've always gotten competent if not outstanding service from her, but then I haven't had any emergency situations comparable to prilicla's, so I can't really say if my provider would be any kind of an improvement over yours.

Yeah-- thinking about it, anything that only involves my doctor and/or the practice isn't bad. They're good about getting appointments scheduled quickly for anything urgent, and he's good about calling back. (With the problem that sometimes it's impossible for me to be at one reachable number all day, leading to telephone tag. I do wish my cell phone reception reliably penetrated to my office.) The staff is decent, if not perfect (they gave lousy directions to the emergency room when we needed it).

But it's only when interfacing with the rest of the hospital that I seem to run into problems. And I don't really understand it, given that this is a well-funded, highly regarded hospital that's clearly put a fair amount of effort into patient comfort (e.g., building new rooms as singles, generally making the surroundings as pleasant as possible-- they don't even ban cell phones). My first thought was that I'd just been exposed to the rare problems that any large organization has, but time and experience make that seem less likely.

Of course, the scariest possibility is that this actually does constitute above-average service at a gold-plated hospital under good insurance.