Leah B. Gilliam, MD

A Korean po boy is the product of a country I’m proud to be from. That’s America. Not this crap our government is doing.

I have an absurd number of pets. One dog. Two cats. Fifteen chickens. Four goldfish. One horse. Cows. I don’t know how many. Some aren’t pets. At least two are.

Anyway. Meet Speedy. She’s new. She has a snail friend. I think my kid has named that one Snaily. Also added a cory to the new 55G tank.

There is no amount of money in the world that would lead me to fight a Vietnamese refugee that grew up in Louisiana

(Also I really want to try a Korean style Po’ Boy)

Without. I can’t think of another time that I’ve been able to just sit without feeling like I should get up and do something else. I had to sit. Sitting was the most important thing at that moment so I was free to enjoy it.

Ours too. Occasionally they’d get the ones that were hexagon-shaped. That was always a good day.

Again I say, if I were a bird, I would be a wren.

What does it say about my life that getting my teeth cleaned this morning has been one of the most relaxed moments of the last month?

I didn’t get the impression that they were making light of it, just that it was a huge case. They were already aware and they’d add my report to the running tally. Less of a case to crack. They already knew a lot about this one.

Oh I don’t doubt that at all.

When I called to report it, the folks at Medicare weren’t surprised. They immediately told me they were aware of the company and that it wasn’t anything I needed to be concerned about personally beyond filing the report.

I live in a red state but the company that’s been billing these claims is based in Colorado. That may be the game. Idk.

There actually have been huge issues with DME fraud lately. I’ve had a half dozen people who were never my patients get EOBs from a DME company for urinary catheters I didn’t order. Medicare had been successfully billed in each case to the tune of $12k. I wonder if that’s the motivation?

He’s gonna lie. They’re gonna clap. It’s just going to make me angry.

Ok so I’m not watching this circus and I’m NOT saying anything about ACB’s character but I actually think she really detests him. And I think that’s hilarious.

Maybe but im told that this is not the case.

So what I’ve been told is that insurance reimbursement for cavities is considerably worse than almost anything else dentists do, so they’d generally rather not fill a cavity unless it’s necessary because it’s more profitable to use those appointment slots for cosmetic work or cleanings.

Yes. Because why is healthcare urgent?

My MA is on hold with an insurance company. I kid you not, her estimated wait time is 597 minutes.

My FREE goldfish will be moving into her FOURTH home in the next few days. She and her pals have lived more than two years and are officially being upgraded to a 55 gallon tank. We had to go buy furniture large enough to hold the tank, proving again that there is no such thing as a free pet.

I feel this.

“It’s a great day at Cohere Health!” they say when they answer the phone for the line to schedule a peer-to-peer because the patient’s scan was denied.

Do not EVER talk to me about value based care as it relates to partnerships with insurance companies.

I spent an hour and twenty minutes on the phone today trying to convince BlueCross to cover a CTA so a patient I suspected to have a pulmonary embolism might avoid a costly ED cost. They wouldn’t cover it because in my rural community, a d-dimer is a send out test.

You and my kid. He’s learning to read and he gets super excited when he can sound out “poop”.

I think it’s called the Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs or something.

I’ve been reading about dinosaurs with my kid and I defy you to read this book and not start singing “Now the sky is COPROLITE. Oh oh oh oh!”

The above comments inspired by Marsha Blackburn. I have more but that’ll do for the moment.

And it maddens me that people believe that these politicians are learning anything from talking to people in those places. There are places far more remote than where I am, but I promise Knoxville isn’t going to tell you what it’s like to practice in Lexington or Parsons or Paris or Huntingdon.

These people don’t know rural health, yall. They’re not stupid people. But until you’re in a town that doesn’t have the specialist someone needs closer than 100 miles away and you’re treating a patient who doesn’t have a car, you don’t know anything about rural health.

Every freaking time someone wants a photo op to show how they’re addressing “rural health in Tennessee” they’re going to Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, or Murfreesboro. Committees are developed to address rural health needs. They’re pulling from academic staff at the ivory tower institutions.