Meet the new Cook County Hospital (addition), same as the old hospital
On Monday, I went to the Cook County Hospital for my regular yearly cancer check-up. Since I was last there, they moved the oncology clinic (which I knew as Clinic G) into a brand-new, modern-looking addition that, as it turned out, was kind of built in the back of the main building. And, as one would expect of a building built toward the end of the second decade of the 21st Century, it featured a lot more glass and a lot more outdoor light. And it is called, inexplicably, "Professional Building." I mean, I have no idea what it is it about that made it more professional than any other Cook County Health & Hospitals System building.
Now, I was used to just going up to Clinic G on the second floor and signing in there. But it turned out that, in the new professional building, you had to check in at the first floor lobby. Except they checked me in at the second lobby desk anyway. And, in the brand-new professional building, instead of signing papers, I had to sign all the release forms on touch pads. Which isn't that big of a deal - I mean, I can never get my signature quite right when I sign it with my finger, but I can say the same thing for, like, half of the stores and coffee shops. And I suppose it saves money on paper. And you can magnify text if you're nearsighted. But I was a bit annoyed that the staffer just quickly scrolled through the texts of the release forms. At the casual glance, they didn't look any different from what I had to sign before, but what about people who never read them?
The brand-new, professional building did have some genuinely useful new features. There was wi-fi, for starters. When I first landed in the hospital back in June 2014, one of the nurses memorably told me that, with the budget they had, they could either put in bedside TVs that picked up local channels or wi-fi, but not both. And, as I later found out, it worked in the whole building, not just the new, professional building.
Another useful feature is that they changed the way Financial Aid/CountyCare sign-up worked. In the past, if you needed to apply for CountyCare, or explain to the hospital that you got billed by mistake (which, as I written before, has happened a few times), you had to go down to financial Aid office, wait in a long line to sign in, wait another hour or two until somebody gets to you and then they process you. But now, they got some financial aid staff right there at the oncology clinic, so you can apply for CountyCare/take care of financial issues right then and there. I mean, it still took almost an hour and a half for the doctor to see me, but I didn't have to add another two hours or so on top of that in financial aid office. Which was nice.
But what struck me most that, once it was my turn to get to the appointment... Inside, the new clinic in the new, professional building didn't look that different from Clinic G. I mean, there were newer computers (that still sometimes took their sweet time pulling up information, because I guess long wait times is just a general Cook County Hospital constant), but the floor plan was fairly similar, the exam rooms' dimensions were pretty similar, the way the equipment was arranged was pretty similar, and even the color scheme was pretty similar - white as opposed to Clinic G's pale beige, light yellow as opposed to some pale-pinkinsh hues.
On one hand, that's okay - so long as the doctors and nurses can take care of patients, who cares about the paint on the walls? But on the other hand... It just kind of amuses me that, for all of the exterior glass and touchpads, for all the new computers, so much didn't really change at all.
Now, I was used to just going up to Clinic G on the second floor and signing in there. But it turned out that, in the new professional building, you had to check in at the first floor lobby. Except they checked me in at the second lobby desk anyway. And, in the brand-new professional building, instead of signing papers, I had to sign all the release forms on touch pads. Which isn't that big of a deal - I mean, I can never get my signature quite right when I sign it with my finger, but I can say the same thing for, like, half of the stores and coffee shops. And I suppose it saves money on paper. And you can magnify text if you're nearsighted. But I was a bit annoyed that the staffer just quickly scrolled through the texts of the release forms. At the casual glance, they didn't look any different from what I had to sign before, but what about people who never read them?
The brand-new, professional building did have some genuinely useful new features. There was wi-fi, for starters. When I first landed in the hospital back in June 2014, one of the nurses memorably told me that, with the budget they had, they could either put in bedside TVs that picked up local channels or wi-fi, but not both. And, as I later found out, it worked in the whole building, not just the new, professional building.
Another useful feature is that they changed the way Financial Aid/CountyCare sign-up worked. In the past, if you needed to apply for CountyCare, or explain to the hospital that you got billed by mistake (which, as I written before, has happened a few times), you had to go down to financial Aid office, wait in a long line to sign in, wait another hour or two until somebody gets to you and then they process you. But now, they got some financial aid staff right there at the oncology clinic, so you can apply for CountyCare/take care of financial issues right then and there. I mean, it still took almost an hour and a half for the doctor to see me, but I didn't have to add another two hours or so on top of that in financial aid office. Which was nice.
But what struck me most that, once it was my turn to get to the appointment... Inside, the new clinic in the new, professional building didn't look that different from Clinic G. I mean, there were newer computers (that still sometimes took their sweet time pulling up information, because I guess long wait times is just a general Cook County Hospital constant), but the floor plan was fairly similar, the exam rooms' dimensions were pretty similar, the way the equipment was arranged was pretty similar, and even the color scheme was pretty similar - white as opposed to Clinic G's pale beige, light yellow as opposed to some pale-pinkinsh hues.
On one hand, that's okay - so long as the doctors and nurses can take care of patients, who cares about the paint on the walls? But on the other hand... It just kind of amuses me that, for all of the exterior glass and touchpads, for all the new computers, so much didn't really change at all.