Hold still whilst I hippa you, son!

Shsssssh! I don’t normally do this, but I’m going to leak the name of my next web project even before I’ve secured the domain name. WEGOTYOURFAX.COM. Don’t tell anyone, k? It’s a secret! So here’s the inside poop on my next big romantic web site. Remember, you heard it here first!

The place where I work has a fax machine. I’ve often thought about blogging about that fax machine, but I’ve never gotten around to it. That’s a whole ‘nother story.

For this story, the most pertinent detail to know is that our fax number is one digit different than a local medical office. Because people in the medical profession are decidedly not detail oriented, it should come as no surprise what happens next. Right?

Yep. We get medical faxes all … day … long.

You need to know that we are an ecommerce retail business that has absolutely nothing to do with the medical industry. (Our niche industry is selling poop, but that is also another story.)

Sometimes we receive faxes about prescriptions. Sometimes they pertain to medical tests and/or test results. Sometimes it is the patient’s medical history. And even other times it is diagnoses and treatment plans. Sometimes the fax is one or two pages long. Sometimes it is 100 pages long, tying up our fax machine for quite some time and, presumably, costing the owners of our company some serious scrilla.

Even though none of us in the office here have taken the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, we still more often than not give more a flying shit about the patient (and the patient’s privacy) than the obliviot puss bag of flesh that originated the fax. (The non-detail oriented person in the medical profession who is unable to correctly dial a phone.) We fucking care more than they do!

When we get a fax we immediately call the people who sent the fax for three reasons. One, we figure they just might wanna know of their HIPAA violation. Two, presumably, some poor son of bitch’s medical care hangs in the balance. Thirdly, they just might want to update their phone book so they don’t keep dialing the same wrong number over and over again.

You can guess what happens next, right?

Yep. We call the person who sent the fax and let them know. 99% of the time they could freakin’ care less. Don’t you at least want to get the fax to the correct destination for the patient’s sake?!?!?

To be honest, occasionally we call someone back who actually cares. (That would be the other one percent.) The other day someone official with a clipboard stopped by to follow up on their misrouted fax. They looked at our fax machine. They looked at our shredder. They wanted to interview and write down the names of everyone who had looked at the fax. Now that is impressive.

So now I’m a little tired of this bullshit. To the obliviots who dump on me when I’m only trying to help them, I got news for you. I’m starting a web site. It will document your name (cover sheet) and print the pages you misfaxed and that you couldn’t care less. You can eat it on the web site, biatch.