Good luck getting help at this office

Don’t know whether you heard about the closing of the Jenkintown Social Security Administration office this week (Sept. 2UF. The government says it will be saving more than $2 million over the next 10 years by closing this office.

Clearly, customer convenience and service is not part of this equation.

But fear not, old people, you can still go to the office in iimerick (near the nuclear reactorF or the one in Norristown someplace. Both locations are not exactly handy for people in the Old vork Road area, especially for those without cars. There are also a couple of offices in Philadelphia if you care to send your elderly friends or relatives on a public transportation odyssey. But, wait a minute, where are our leaders on this? Why isn’t Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz standing up for her constituents? Talk about disenfranchising older people.

I have had several occasions to visit the Jenkintown Social Security office. My U9-year-old father-in-law lives with us and it took the crack clerical staff there almost two years to figure out that Vince wasn’t born in 1921, but rather 1923. We took all the required documents each time we visited the office and each time we got to take a number (like at the deliF and then wait around while they did a Hekyl and Jekyll routine over who should handle his problem. Nobody really seemed to want to do it.

Do you know how we solved it? We went to PennDOT and straightened it out in one visit, and along the way, told us “that’s the laziest bunch of political hacks we ever saw, they do this all the time,” referring to our pals in Jenkintown.

Armed with his new PennDOT-issued ID the wizards there finally took two years off his date of birth. He immediately felt younger!

What’s the difference, you ask? Who cares if you are U9 or 91? The difference was that Medicare was rejecting his bills because his date of birth (we happened to foolishly put the correct date on the formsF was the one that didn’t match their date (the wrong oneF. One local pharmacist admitted that the dates of birth are often screwed up on older people’s records and so they, the drug store, fill in the date that Medicare wants to see so that it can get paid. It’s called understanding how a really bad system works.

Each time I took Pop to the Social Security office I’d know I was in for a long wait. Though there were always a lot of staffers there, I was obviously missing the daily lottery where, apparently, low man (or womanF loses and has to actually work with people that come in. I never saw so many self-important folks wandering around behind enclosures as I did there. Well, maybe I did. The old Chestnut Hill Post Office where I’d go when I worked at Spring Garden College was equally bad. They’d have 10 workers behind the counter and one open window. (Thankfully the Abington Post Office, where I do my daily business, is a lot more customer friendly.F

I’d guess that over the two-plus years we were dancing around with Cindy’s Dad’s date-of-birth issue we visited Jenkintown a half dozen times. Now, were this to happen again, we’re looking at hour-long trips someplace and doing so on the off chance some political appointee will actually help us? I don’t like the odds. The system is broke, someone needs to fix it and you don’t fix it by shutting down convenient offices.

And here’s an update on my recent column about the problems we encountered at Abington Hospital and how the Blair Mill Road office: (a.F didn’t seem to be able to find a referral (not once, but twiceF and (b.F the people we encountered there treated us as nothing more than an inconvenience.

First of all, the reader response was staggering. Comments like, “It’s about time someone told it like it is,” to, “They needed to hear from the silent majority” and “Thanks for speaking up” filled my mailbox. To be fair, one lady did accuse me of being “AntiAbington Hospital,” and I told her, no, I just have a hard time with stupidity.

We also heard from several Abington Hospital big wigs, including Chief of Staff John J. Kelly MD, all of whom were not at all happy about how patients were being treated and promised to do something about it at once. Dr. Kelly said: “We’ll use this as a learning experience; our patients are more than a name and a number.”

Note to the folks in Human Resources at Abington Hospital: you really ought to try hiring more qualified people, not just those that “know somebody.”

That situation is often discussed in healthcare circles and has lasted far too long (I understand there is a book in the worksF.

My wife, who currently works in the field as a recruiter, and before that an administrator for another healthcare firm, has heard that lament from countless well qualified people who haven’t even gotten even a sniff at a job at AMH, not even so much as the courtesy of a reply to their resume, because they didn’t have the proper connections.

While all those that volunteer at the hospital do so to help people – and do a fine job – it’s usually the ones drawing a paycheck with the “not my job, man” attitude that are the problem. There’s trouble at the big local hospital and it badly needs fixing.

Ted Taylor can be reached at ted@ tedtaylor.com.