Amid all the pop nonsense and rumor mongering and character assassinating going on at Twitter, one lucky blogger found the service useful in helping her avoid what she believed to be unnecessary surgery.
Sarah Cortes, a technology consultant and blogger, found herself in a rural Pennsylvania hospital with a spine fracture. She claims the hospital did everything in its power to persuade her to get immediate emergency surgery. She wanted to consult with doctors in her home state of Massachusetts before making any decision, but the hospital, she claims, did its best to prevent her from doing so, including limiting her telephone access.
So she took out her iPhone and Tweeted away for names of neurosurgeons in Boston.
"This is about the money," Cortes opined on her blog about the high pressure tactics from the hospital, whose staff warned her she’d be paralyzed if she refused the surgery and told her that her insurance company wouldn’t pay for further consultations.
In the end, Cortes returned to Boston, where she was treated with a torso brace, which she must wear for four months. No surgery is anticipated.
Now, there’s a successful use of Twitter, which is otherwise about as useful as schoolyard discussion in the seventh grade.
Nary a Tweet out of Robert Packer Hospital, however. Hospital officials can’t give their side of the story because it would be a breach of the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) privacy rule. Otherwise, can you imagine the Tweets coming out of the operating room every time a celebrity was operated on? "My, I didn’t realize how overweight (fill in the name) was." "She (fill in the name) doesn’t look nearly as good in person."
Tweet, Tweet, Tweet.