It Pays to Write

Earlier this year my doctor put me on 24-hour humidification. So I had to have ventilators with the additional humidification circuitry. I have two ventilators incase something happens to one of them I always have a backup. Every month I swap out the active vent with the backup so I am certain both ventilators are in working condition.

At the end of August I had to have one of my ventilator replaced because it failed. So at the beginning of September the company brought out a replacement ventilator. They have yet to bring a working one. Some of the vents they brought worked for a short time (hours) others haven't worked at all. So finally I decided the time had come to start writing letters. I wrote a letter to the company who supplies me with the ventilator, to the ventilator manufacture, to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JACHO), and on the advice of my son and my sister to the FDA.

I waited and after a number of weeks with no response and a couple more failed ventilators, I wrote everyone another letter. This time I received personalized not form letters. I even received phone calls from the ventilator manufacture and the company who provides me with the ventilators, who it turns out, repairs the ventilators.

Then yesterday the regional manager of the company who supplies my ventilators called and asked if it would be ok if she, the local branch manager, my respiratory therapist and a representative of the vent manufacture, come next Monday afternoon with a working ventilator in order to resolve this issue. It turns out she has to write a report and send it to JACHO in response to my complaint to that organization.

So as I stated in the subject line, "It pays to write".