Illness on the Road: Tips From A Hotel Doctor

April 18, 2008 at 9:08 AM | by amandak | Comments (0)

If you've been ill in a Los Angeles hotel and needed a doctor, the chances are high that the white-coat who came to see you was Dr. Mike Oppenheim.

He's been a hotel doctor since the 1980s and reckons he's made 15,000 hotel room visits. And advised thousands more over the phone.

He wrote a few tips for hotels recently that might just be useful for you, too, if you end up sick in a hotel room. Lots of hotels are using those agencies who take calls and then page a doctor who might turn up, eventually.

If this happens to you, and you're wasting hours of your vacation or working time in bed waiting, hassle the hotel staff a bit more, because they might also be able to phone someone direct.

If you're not ill in bed but have forgotten your prescription medication, then a hotel doctor will probably be able to help you easily. If you can get hold of one on the phone--Oppenheim says the smartest hotels will have a direct line to their doctor, since he's getting paid a packet to be on call for them--they can usually just phone a local pharmacy and you can go pick up some replacement pills. Who would've thought life could be so easy?

[Photo: sbluerock]

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