Social Workers - Middlesborough, KY

"if you don't know about the hippocratic oath, it's an ancient pledge used today by universities and other institutions teaching the medical arts. cherokee health systems is the antithesis of the hippocratic oath. cherokee health system will refuse to "soothe the pain of anyone who needs [their] art" if you're 10 minutes late. then they'll demand apology when you express frustration at how difficult it is to get there. still, you'll be shunned by heartless bureaucrats who call themselves doctors and nurses. more from the hippocratic oath: "i will offer those who suffer all my attention, my science and my love. never will i betray them or risk their well-being to satisfy my vanity. i will not hurt my fellow... i will never harm my suffering friend... i will try to understand his sorrows but his secrets will never leave my ears. i pray that the attention i give to those who put themselves in my hands be rewarded with happiness. i swear to care for anyone who suffers, prince or slave. if i ever break this oath, let my gods take away my knowledge of this art and my own health. here speaks a citizen, a servant of people. may i be destroyed if i betray these words." pretty serious stuff. and none of it will you find at cherokee, other than the betrayal of this affirmation. there's lots of that. my elderly mom has a friend who used to go to cherokee. after telling her how they refused to help me (i had lab results i have never seen), she said she experienced the same thing; being 10 minutes late and being told she would not be seen. she cares for her autistic grandson full-time and can make things difficult when it comes to being at an appointment on time. but cherokee doesn't care. you're a number and if you don't fit into their square hole because you're a round peg, they'll throw you away rather than find the round hole and actually help you. we're considering filing a class action lawsuit against cherokee. i'm unemployed and uninsured since i came to help my septuagenarian mom. the federal emergency medical and treatment labor act (EMTLA) expressly prohibits healthcare providers from denying treatment to indigent or uninsured patients. under EMTLA, both hospitals and individual doctors may be held liable for bodily harm. mom's friend has medicare. i have nothing. i was relying on them to give me lab results regarding a couple of potentially serious symptoms. it was ten minutes. the dude with the appointment after mine was sitting in the lobby. he sat there for ten more minutes after i arrived. he was called in. then i was told i would not be seen that day. interesting thing is the registered nurse/health care provider i was seeing, krystal rall, had promised me i'd have 15 minutes leeway when i explained some of the issues with my old truck and in caring for my mom a month earlier. lies. she turned me away after only 10 minutes. mom has a great pyreneese who will run into the woods or down to the road if she gets through the gate. that day, she did exactly that and for over an hour i drove around seeking her. it put me behind schedule to get to my appointment, where it seems they'd rather your dog get hit and killed slowly and painfully and with great suffering on the road instead of administering healing to a man who once worked for a dog rescue. so much for "understanding our sorrows" and "care for anyone who suffers." from dr. jean cobb [director of compliance] to their bitter front desk staff, cherokee employees will ignore you, lie to you, cheat you and hurt you. having experienced this at two locations, new tazewell and maynardville, i can assure you that they're more concerned with themselves than with your medical care and that they seem to revel in their selfish and deceitful nature. i wonder what their CEO, parinda khatri, thinks of all this, or if she's the source of the hateful treatment of patients. i wonder if cherokee COO suzanne bailey condones denial of treatment to patients and the possibility of a very public lawsuit. i suspect they don't care, as this seems to happen to others, not only me. across the web, their reviews are filled with one-stars. my first experience was at their maynardville offices, where nurse practitioner matt beason, my regular practitioner, could never write a blood pressure script with refills, leading to a day of calls and messages for renewals month after month. when i expressed my frustration after four months of this, he finally promised to write the scripts for a few months time to save me the neverending hassle. next day, i went to walgreens. got my 'script.... "0 refills. dr. auth required." lies. i blew up on the phone at anybody who unluckily got on the other end with curse words and yelling. a day or so later i had a regularly scheduled tele-appointment with mary phillips, the maynardville mental health counselor. when i expressed my frustration to her, she laughed. i ended the conversation and never returned to the maynardville office again. i went up to new tazewell instead. where the same kind of flippant and malicious "treatment" continued to occur. after i left angrily after being turned away from new tazewell, i had a regular appointment on the phone with mental health counselor matthew reese, who demanded i apologize for being upset when i was lied to and denied care after a stressful afternoon trying to find the dog. i did not curse. i did not call anybody names. i began to shake and search my phone for dr. jean's number. i was too upset to find it. so i left. after hearing matt's reasons, i gave mine and demanded THEY apologize for their lies. finally he said, "well, i think we've reached an impasse and there's nothing more to say." "i have one more thing to say." "what's that?" "____ you." click. i won't support liars and hypocrites. i won't prop up their egos. and i won't let them get away with it. you, dear reader, have been warned. on cherokee health's "who we serve" web page it starts with, "assuring access to quality and compassionate health services." that is, as you see, a lie. there are ten more bullet points on that page and all of them are lies. my favorite is their pledge to, "uphold the principles of belonging, dignity and justice." bwah HA HA HA HAAAA! THEY TURN PATIENTS AWAY. they remove our sense of belonging, they rob us of dignity and mock the idea of justice with their heartless bureaucracy. cherokee health systems has 21 offices throughout tennessee. if you drive past their offices in new tazewell of maynardville, you'll notice large banners by the road proclaiming "NOW ACCEPTING NEW PATIENTS." maybe they wouldn't have to let people know they need patients if they quit refusing their current ones. just a thought. the ignorance and hypocrisy of their words versus the actions which express the selfish darkness of their hearts would be laughable if it didn't result in harm. but it does. i can't even tell you the struggle i now have in getting adequate medical care, as i'm relatively remote and everything is far away. now, help is even farther away because cherokee health says they won't serve me any more. again from the hippocratic oath; "if i ever break this oath, let my gods take away my knowledge of this art and my own health. here speaks a citizen, a servant of people. may i be destroyed if i betray these words." condemnation and destruction of their souls awaits."