Question by holligolitelee66: Question for social worker therapists about discharging patients?
Without going into too many details, I have had a series of bad experiences with the mental health systems in the last 2 months. Was in hospital for depression, received no discharge planning/family meetings/never saw a social worker privately to prepare for discharge. Was told I was going home the day I as discharged with NO notice (although Doc was aware of what insurance co. had approved) From there, went to partial hospitalization treatment daily for a week, and, again, as told that I was being discharged from that after only one week. Doc said insurance co. was cutting me off. Called insurance co. and THEY said no one had even bothered to request more days for me! (normal time spent in partial is 2-3 weeks…they had me write out my goals on a Wednesday, never even got to meet/address them as I was d/c on Friday! Well, I found a therapist (a licensed social worker) and saw him 3 times. After 3rd visit went to make appointment w/secretary and she called his office, and then she said “He’ll call you in the next couple days about that.” So, I waited. This was on a Thursday. The following Monday, I received a letter from him, dated the day I saw him last for therapy, saying ” I am writing to inform you that I can no longer see you for therapy” The rest of the letter just told me to continue seeing my psychiatrist, and that I “get connected with a social worker/therapist who can meet my needs”. It contained no referrals for other therapists in area, or even a crisis hotline number! Given that he knew I had been given no notice for discharge from other programs, I would have hoped he would have been a little less cruel than to just send me a cold note! I would have been perfectly accepting if he had said (either in person…which he should have had the balls to do…or even a letter) I don’t think I can help you, here are some people who might be able to! Needless to say I was crushed, especially given the poor treatment I had from the other facilities. I SWEAR to you I am NOT a difficult patient, am very compliant, my bill was paid, and I’m not a violent or threatening person. I know all this sounds crazy, but it’s true. Just one bad luck thing after another. My question is for LCSW’s, is there a place to make a complaint about this man? I don’t think he broke the law, but he certainly didn’t, in my opinion, handle this in an ethical/professional manner. Also, thank God I have people who support me because if I had been alone, I would have felt totally lost and abandoned and then God knows what could have happened! I appreciate any feedback any licensed social worker could give me. I just don’t want him to do this to someone else. Thank you!

Best answer:

Answer by Dewdropmas
Your report sounds very centered and grounded in the realization that your treatment was substandard. Since their treatment of you left many questions regarding why they did what they did, perhaps some of those questions could be answered by obtaining a copy of your treatment records and also any documents and correspondence related to insurance payments for your bill. You are entitled to see your records, however if they give you a hard time about it, you can engage an attorney to help out with that.

I don’t know if you’ve kept up with the national news as regards health care, but the health care industry appears to be in a mess. Insurance companies really do not want to have to pay if they can avoid it, and not everyone behaves ethically. In larger agencies, there is a division between care providers and administrators, and pressure is put on care providers to meet a certain standard of “billable hours” in order to maintain their employment. Some therapists go in to private practice in order to be able to control the amount of work they do, keeping it down to a reasonable amount of hours, and in order to avoid some of the bureaucratic make-work that is characteristic of the health care industry today, realizing they are unlikely to earn as much as they would have earned if they continued working in a large agency.

You can investigate whether there is a private practitioner who would work with you, and whether they would bill to your insurance or consider an ability-to-pay arrangement. It is helpful to be able to express to a care provider with whom you choose to work exactly what you want them to do for you because knowing you need to do that helps you figure out what you want and what would be helpful, and it helps them realize whether they are able to provide what you are asking.

The part of your statement above that didn’t sound as grounded or balanced was the worrying you did of what might have happened. If you send your thoughts out into the future to conjure up horror stories of what might have happened, the only result that can happen from doing that is worry and anxiety, so in short, that isn’t a good thing to do. Maybe you did that as a way of trying to demonstrate how important it is that what happened to you should not have happened, because you didn’t feel they listened to you.

There is something almost magical which happens when whatever a person says, they say with confidence. Maybe you don’t feel confident about very much right now, but the question you submitted here suggests to me that you feel confident you should have been treated with more respect. So when you say you want your questions answered, and specifically name a certain thing you want to know, reach down inside you to connect with your own confidence as you say it. You don’t have to be angry to be heard, but being confident about whatever you choose to say works its own magic so that people are much more likely to listen.
Until you can locate someone you feel right about working with, play around with this little magic trick, and spend some time getting to know yourself well enough to know what you feel confident about, and then focus on just communicating that much. You might not be saying a whole lot at first, but it will feel right and good to say what is true when you realize you feel confident about saying it.

You also might consider whether you really want to engage with licensing agencies to make complaints about previous care providers. Most likely you’d have to prove malpractice for your complaint to result in any correction to their behavior, and engaging the legal system can become a profoundly negative experience. You do not need the involvement of anyone else to call or write the care provider directly, simply to state how you feel–not that doing that would change them, but doing that can help change you, to stand up for yourself and say what is true, even if they will not appreciate what you have to say. It would probably work out best if you learned what facts exist on your patient record, so that whatever is there could support whatever you have to say.

If I were to work with a therapist, I would want to work with someone who wanted to work with me, who had respect for me even if at first they did not understand me, who listened well to what I said, and who spoke their truth to me (was honest and not hiding their thoughts from me,) even if it was hard for me to hear. It would be best if they could reflect back to me some positive things they felt about me, and I would quite likely ask for that up front.

The more you engage in negative thinking or worrying, the more your life will go in directions that can cause you trouble. The more you take time to figure out what feels important to you and communicate that with confidence, then the greater chance you have of having things in your life work out well. And as with most skills, practice makes perfect. 🙂

I hope something that I have said here will be helpful to you.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

 

 

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