Tag Archives: medicine

The Daily Feed
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ZocDoc Comes to DC

Photo courtesy of
‘Doctor’s Office’
courtesy of ‘Kelly Sue’

As we’ve progressed further and further into the digital age (and I’m speaking here of time, and not necessarily of social progress) we’ve gotten the ability to schedule a lot of things online. Grocery Delivery, Flights, Trains, Concert Tickets, Car Pickup, Maintenance Appointments. The more I can read the appointment availability schedule for myself, the more I can arrange my schedule to my own satisfaction instead of feeling at the beck and call of others. It’s freeing to make your own appointments.

Enter ZocDoc. They’ve worked with 12,000 doctors and dentists in the DC area to build an appointment system that you can access online. Tell it your health insurance, and what speciality or kind of generalist that you want to see, and it finds appointments in their schedule and puts them up for you to see. Got the sniffles or possibly the swine flu in 20010 and you’ve got Care First insurance? There are appointments for twelve different doctors in DC for today. How about Humana PPO instead? Eleven docs are waiting for you.

Where was this when I needed a GP appointment two months ago and had to wait five weeks to see someone?

The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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Today at Work: A Big Bag of Drugs


Bag of drugs
Originally uploaded by carlweaver

A coworker brought a large trash bag labeled “drugs” into our office and has been calling different pharmacies to see what she can do with them. They are old medications from her boyfriend’s father – prescriptions from over the years that she found in the house she and her boyfriend are moving into.

With all the hullabloo over drugs and other flushed nonsense ending up in our drinking water, it’s certainly a bad idea to just throw these in the trash or flush them down the crapper, but how should she dispose of them? The pharmacy technicians she has spoken with are at a loss as well.

The upside to all this is that she resembled a drug-distributing Santa Claus, the sack over her shoulder making a hunch on her back. It was just like Christmas, except with drugs. There’s nothing “good” in there, mind you, just blood pressure meds and the such, pills, vials, liquids, ointments and gel caps for various ailments we will likely all develop as we get old. All of us except Katie, that is, who is young enough to reference her college’s Wikipedia policy. Damn kids.

Any ideas what to do with this stuff? Bueller?