Sounds exciting, right? Well, it is more of a mystery at this point, but if we ever find out the details it may wind up being a caper.
I am a doctor's office manager, and we have only a few of us on staff. Me, our secretary/receptionist/front end manager, the doctor's former office manager who comes in once a week to enter charges, and a surgical tech who comes in on our surgery clinic days, about twice a month. This wonderful lady is a friend of the practice and is very well-known in her community. Half of our patients already know her, if that says anything! We are a pretty tight-knit group.
Last time we had a surgery clinic she came to me to ask where we were keeping the hospital gowns. Hmm. They are kept where they have always been kept, in the supply room next to the OR, of course. Well, no, when I went to look they were ALL GONE. Every one. We had a supply of maybe 30 cotton gowns, the awful thin cotton ones that tie in the back, and they were folded and wrapped in plastic wrap from the linen company who handles our laundry. One bundle of the regular-sized gowns and one bundle of the extra-large gowns. We use only half a dozen gowns a month or so, not very many, so typically the gowns stay in their tightly wrapped bundles in the supply room on the shelf.
The linen guy comes once a month and brings me any gowns that we have used as well as surgical towels, of which we use quite a few. He comes to the supply room and drops off the bundles there, and picks up the soiled linen bag that sits in a frame, replacing it with a clean, empty bag.
I called the linen service and let them know that all of our gowns were gone (????) and inquired of our guy if he had any ideas. He didn't, of course! They promised to send him early to bring us more gowns so we wouldn't be completely out.
He came by the other day and marveled at the notion that someone would steal these gowns. They are not exactly a valuable commodity, right? He gave me 20 more gowns or so, and when he went to collect our soiled linen bag he gingerly picked up a very bright salmon-colored gown that was within. He said, "This isn't yours!" and I agreed; our gowns are very pale bluish grey, washed out and faded. He then picked up another gown in the soiled linen bag that was teal and white striped with flowers. Also not ours!
What is going on? All of our own gowns are missing, and gowns that don't belong to us are in the dirty linen bag. This makes no sense. Incidentally, any items that are placed in the soiled linen bag won't be brought back to our office unless they are part of our inventory, so they will be lost forever if they don't belong to us. If someone put them in there thinking they'd be laundered and returned, they're wrong.
I reported all this to the property manager, and they are baffled, to say the least. Naturally, we suspect the cleaning crew, since none of us on staff are responsible, and we have not lent our keys to anyone. I wish I could be a fly on the wall overnight, so I could see where these unfamiliar gowns came from and who took our bundles of clean gowns. We don't have any kind of surveillance cameras but maybe we need them.
The property manager does NOT suspect their cleaning crew, also naturally, and since we have office staff with keys they don't feel responsible, though they think the whole thing is bizarre, as do I.
The previous tenants in our suite provided pain management for spine injuries, and our supply room used to house very valuable and desirable drugs, so the door handle assembly has a key pad for a combination lock. We don't use it currently, and we don't know the combination, but if the door closes it locks automatically and is opened by the front door key. That doesn't do us much good, obviously, so I'm having a locksmith come in and program the key pad with a combination that we will use to open the supply room door, and everything important will be kept there. I am also having the cabinets in the OR fitted with key locks, so we can secure the injectables (steroids and lidocaine), syringes and needles that someone might wish to steal.
I have not noticed any reduction in inventory in the OR at all, but the only thing I can think is that someone is using our office to do procedures after hours. That doesn't make a lot of sense, though, and if they were, they likely wouldn't use a pile of gowns, and would not bring gowns from the outside into our office and discard them in our linen bag.
Do we call the police? I think not, at this point. I have no cash loss here, but likely I will have to replace those gowns whenever we close the practice and discontinue the linen service. I will have to inquire with them about that and see.
This is a curious case, for sure.
