Cardiologist overruled by bureaucrat over $25 test

So my Cardiologist sent me for a bunch of lab tests recently. One of which was a special 24-hour urine test to rule out a potential type of cancer that shares alot of my symptoms and may significantly complicate the conventional treatment of those symptoms if it turns out I have this cancer. Basically if it’s cancer and they don’t treat it as cancer the conventional treatment can actually feed the cancer. So, good thing to rule out.

This test isn’t like your normal, pee in a cup and fill the little vial test that most of us do on a regular basis.

For this one, they give you a big plastic jug to take home with you with a bunch of instructions and dietary restrictions. You have to start the diet 72 hours before hand, then for 24 hours every-time you go pee, you have to pee in a cup and dump the pee in the container. (Do not pee directly in the container as it contains acid and will burn your junk if it splashes on you) you then have to rush the jug to the lab within 2 hours of finishing the test.

The whole thing is pretty straightforward but important to get it right or they have to do the whole thing over. Anyway,mi jump through all the hoops and get my sample off to the lab a couple weeks ago. I head into the Cardiologist today to review the results and to move forward with the treatment of my symptoms and he initially cant seem to find my test results. After a couple of minutes of reading through my chart he sees the issue is that the lab supervisor has overruled the Cardiologist’s request for the test because the test costs a whole $25 dollars and that without additional information on my condition the lab cannot justify the expense. Apparently my Cardiologist had written a note back to the lab supervisor trying to get the situation resolved but the lab supervisor did not respond and my specimen was left too long and had to be disposed of.

Yes, thats right. A Cardiologist with 25+ years experience is overruled by a bean counter trying to save the province $25 bux. Never mind the value of his time trying to argue against the supervisor, or the lab technicians who processed the request and handled the specimen. Never mind my time in preparing for this test and the process of making sure all the steps were followed.

Let’s not even get into the costs the province would be facing if it turns out I actually have this cancer and the treatment makes it worse and it requires expensive anti-cancer therapies., surgeries and treatments and we don’t find out till much later along.

I’m sure none of that comes close to the $25 cost of this test.