Easy Visits, More or Less

My phone rang as I walked into the gym. A guest at the Sunset Plaza wanted a doctor to “check out” her 9 year-old daughter who’d awoken with a fever and vomited once. This was a good call. Multiple vomits can be worrisome, but one is OK. I jumped at the chance to skip my morning exercise.

Sunset Plaza parking is indoors and free, a bonus on a hot day and on the Sunset Strip where street parking is impossible. The daughter was recovering, so I reassured the parents, a pleasure for everyone.

As I returned to my car, the phone rang again. This was a perfect time for a second call. Lunch was two hours away. Late morning traffic is the day’s thinnest. I could thrill the guest by announcing a speedy arrival.

The caller was a national housecall service. The patient was a Quantas flight attendant at the Hilton. While there is a Hilton at Los Angeles airport, this one was in Costa Mesa, 45 miles away. This was not so good, but there were compensations.

As I’ve written, in the old days airlines called me directly, and I billed them directly. No airline does that now. They call a national housecall service which, of course, calls me. I’m happy to work for the service because, being a better marketer, it’s acquired far more airlines, so I receive more calls. It also pays much more. This is possible because it charges airlines triple my former fee. You may wonder why airlines are willing to pay so much more, but I don’t. I’ve long since stopped believing that bad decisions by people who seem intelligent have a good explanation.  

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A few years ago, Quantas abruptly cancelled flights after an engine exploded. Other airlines followed.

Passengers were stuck in hotels. Within days calls began arriving from guests running out of heart or blood pressure or diabetes medication. They had brought only enough for their trip or the bottles were packed in luggage which the airlines refused to release.

Aware of horror stories about America’s medical system, they were counting their money, hoping to have enough for the necessary king’s ransom. The lucky ones (those in my hotels) were pleased to hear that I don’t charge for replacing legitimate prescriptions.

Most drugs are available worldwide but in different formulations and with different names. Rather than try to figure things out, I tell guests to go to a drug store where the pharmacist will research the matter and phone for my approval.

Guests regularly forget to pack medication, so I do this routinely. My record occurred after 9/11 when all flights stopped, and hotels were packed. Some travelers also fell ill, so my paying business jumped for several weeks. Then everyone returned home, and tourism plunged for a year. That was a bad time for hotel doctors, too.