I was starting out in practice as a health care provider in a small private practice. Our practice had set up cameras to monitor Front Desk activity/outside/hallway for security and emergency reasons as we are in a large metro area with moderate to high crime rate.
So, utilizing ZocDoc -a booking software that is pretty popular in the US- I received an appointment request. The way these work is the software “checks” to see if there is a provider with an available slot and shows it to the patient on the user side and they pick both the time and provider they would like to see given the options of time slots available. The patient then has to input insurance info (if insured) and the standard stuff like name, age, sex at birth, gender, etc. The first thing that seemed weird to me was the appointment request had no insurance listed, only a name, a private relay-esque email and a weird international number. For the sake of HIPPA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) ,I will call the patient JD.
So the next red flag, the appointment is never confirmed via phone. It is during this confirmation call when we discuss showing up early to fill out forms and such.
JD however showed up, filled out their forms. As I was reading the chart, I noticed they left certain fields blank; Very important fields such as emergency contact, place of employment, job, maternal, paternal history. Regardless, we proceeded to go to the exam room.It was a fairly normal workup or initial exam. Think of it as an annual physical but without abnormalities which made me wonder why the person made the appointment in the first place. I mean it is very weird that a person would come for a doctor’s appointment without having at least one “abnormality”
During the workup, I did my usual banter “what do you do for work? Where are you from?” Not because I was trying to pry but because I was trying to show some decent bedside manner. They were pretty blunt in answering and seemed quite annoyed about me asking the questions, but given the location where the practice was I was not taken aback that much. It was weird however that while I was asking the questions and they were agitated, me being in autopilot mode at this point, decided to take their blood pressure. Typically when you’re agitated or flustered- hell, even when you’re talking- your Blood Pressure spikes. There was no such spike in their blood pressure and as a matter of fact it was low - not so low to be dangerous but low enough to be clinically relevant. I asked about it
“Yes, that is normal for me” they said while staring directly into my eyes.
I will say, I was confused about the “lack of accent” this individual had. It seemed pretty standard for the country where the international number was from. There were no distinctive markings or features other than the person’s height which was well above average for either sex (ie taller than avg cis male/male at birth or cis female/female at birth)
I mean we’re not talking Shaq/Lisa Leslie height but …listen I’m 6’3 and when i say someone is tall…They are tall. Another thing that I will say, the patient never - I mean not once- broke eye contact with me. I was not used to being a new practitioner and being in such a small room at such close proximity it made me feel uneasy to say the least.
After the exam, I made a few recommendations regarding low blood pressure and I suggested a follow up.
The appointment ended so they gathered their things and walked to the Front Desk, they paid in cash, and made no follow up appointment.
The day was pretty busy at that point in time so I wasn’t able to do the note right then and there but that appointment stuck with me.
So at the end of the day, I sat down to do my notes and noticed that JD was not in the note tally so i checked the EMR -electronic health record software where we did our notes- thinking that the FD might’ve “forgotten to put them in since its a cash note”
(side note: these notes tend to not be as pressing to smaller practices as they do not need to submit this to insurance companies for reimbursement)
The appointment was not there.
I then decided to check the booking software to pull their info and build their profile -which was not in the EHR either- so that I could do the note. The appointment was in the booking software either. At this point I was extremely confused- was I going crazy?
I asked the front desk staff what happened, they said they didn’t know what/who I was referring to. To their credit, We had seen over 50 people collectively between all the practitioners that day so I let it slide.
I somehow did the note but did not add any info other than the one told to me by the patient in the room during the exam and I made note of the international number but couldn’t remember the code for whatever reason. I have a really good memory so that was odd to me.
Flash forward to 2-3 days later.
I was still thinking about the situation and remembered the cameras. I told the front desk to look at the video with me.
To my astonishment, there they were clear as day, JD talking to me in the hallway in full view of the camera and checking out/paying at the Front Desk, with the staff writing the transaction on both the cash ledger and the digital ledger on our software.
Needless to say all 3 of us were terrified and confused because the patient showed up on two different cameras but also in order to make a payment you needed to have a profile created in the EHR which wasn’t the case because when i went to do the note the profile was not there.
The staff is young so they did some snooping (as young people do) and found no record of anything or anybody by what they thought or remembered was JD’s name.
We called the booking software company and nobody had even made an appointment for that day, at least under my profile.
What’s more is that the neither the EHR nor the booking software had any logs of creating or deleting any accounts on that day (which is something that is done for legal reasons ie you need to show somebody that the patient was in or has been a patient in your practice)
So, still after 5 years, this person has never shown up, we don’t know who JD is or if they ever existed.
I mentioned this on reddit and theories have come up, maybe it was an entity, maybe it was somebody trying to keep their identity secret and then hacked our computer systems. Some people have suggested aliens, but I don’t think ET needs to get a physical on Earth. I
’m convinced-so is the FD staff- that we saw a patient that “didn’t exist”
For this and other reasons, I had since left the practice and the question of who or what JD was remained unsolved, truthfully it was an out of sight, out of mind situation.
A week or so ago, I came back to my apartment from work, I received a mysterious package.
I always get an email preview of what’s to come in the mail so this was odd.
“Hmm…it happens” I thought to myself.
There was no return address nor my home address, just a simple brown envelope with my name written on it.
Hesitantly, I opened it, and found a single photograph inside.
It was a picture of JD, sitting in the waiting room of the old practice. On the back of the photo, a cryptic message was written: “Thank you for your care.”