Hungry, Hungry HIPAA (in which I exaggerate for effect)

How did this become the quintessential interaction of my trade?

brrring brrrring*

Person: Well, hello. I am the person you have made up to recreate your iconically frustrating conversation.

Me: Oh hey thanks for that.

Person: No prob. Shall we get on with this?

Me: Sure, yeah. So aright: my name is Franklin Smearcase and I'm calling from The Society for the Righting of As Many Wrongs as Possible. I'm working with the attorney for Paradigmatic Client.

Person: [this is actually more or less what she said] Wait wait wait I have to stop you. I can't even talk about this person, who I may or may not have seen, unless you have a signed...

Me: YeahyeahyeahIknowIknow. Just...I know you can't even acknowledge that you might know the name, but I also have progress notes you wrote about him so...

Person: [Silence. Perhaps she is sharing an emphatic shrug with me, a shrug of "I fucking give up" over the way that worthy ideals get legislated into straightjackety impossibilities in the interest of Nothing Ever Going Wrong Again. Perhaps she is wanting to shake me. Perhaps she is juggling. On the phone, nobody knows you're juggling.]

Me: How about we try this: Just give me a fax number and I'll send you a HIPAA-compliant release for this guy who, oh, just to indulge a random fantasy, for all we know might one time have been seen for ongoing substance abuse treatment by someone who is you. I mean, it's a small world.

Person: Peach of a world. A true little corker.

[And then she gives me the number with which I can fail to fax her the release for Ostensible Erstwhile Client (né Paradigmatic Client) when some other shit distracts me.]

click

*I wonder if The Youth get all WTF about reference to telephones making bell-like sounds and if maybe in not all that long when we are miming the beginning of a phone conversation we will have to sing the awful little Verizon song or something.