What is it like to be a patient?

I have some simple surgery (is there such a thing?) scheduled for Wednesday of this week. I thought I would start a list of my general observations about the experience. Overall, this experience is a great reminder of what 2,000+ patients and families experience in our health system every single day. My comments below are in no way meant to be negative but rather my objective observations of the experience.
The physician suggests surgery to remove bone spurs and repair some simple problems in my shoulder. I am given contact information for the surgery scheduler in the physician's office. Three phone calls later and I am booked for surgery. Pre-op is scheduled for 3 days prior to surgery in the physician's office. A separate pre-op appointment is needed with the hospital outpatient surgery department and I am given that number to call to make the appointment. I end up booking both pre-op appointments on the same day.
Arrival at the physician's office. The front desk person does not want to copy any of my cards and does not have me fill out any additional forms. The physician representative calls me back and reviews all details of the surgery. This person did an excellent job including giving me temporary markings to put on my left shoulder that say "wrong" so that I do not have a wrong site surgery incident. I leave this appointment to go to the hospital for the hospital pre-op appointment.
I found the hospital department with out much problem and check-in. The front desk representatives are very nice. Soon a lady calls me back to complete the registration details. A copy of my insurance card and license is made even though I know these are in our document imaging system. I wonder why they are being scanned again but at the same time I appreciate that our A/R days are low for all of our hospitals. The representative wanted to look up my information in the computer manually for some reason even thought I was all geeked up to put my palm on the palm vein scanner http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/rd/200506palm-vein.html and watch my name appear on the registration screen (we just implemented it in all of our facilities). Once the representative was done I went back to wait for the lab work. A few minutes later another person calls me back for a blood draw. My name was not verified although I suspect the person saw my name badge when I walked in and used that to verify. Once the blood draw was done I was walked to another area to wait in the hall to speak with a nurse. Once in the office I met with a nurse who took my history and explained to me the procedure and what to expect. Everything went very well.
I am disappointed at how fragmented this process feels for a simple surgery and I will be thinking about how we can improve this for our patients. I can't help but think of the hip replacement patient or the back surgery patient who must deal with all of this while not feeling well and it makes me wish that it could be so much simpler. I am a healthy person with a mild problems so I take it all in stride. More to come....