Partner potentially has Covid so we went to have him tested at an urgent care clinic yesterday. Classic symptoms and a 102 fever that mildly breaks while pushing fever reducer. This was the second time in the last six months that I’ve had issues with urgent care centers (2 different franchises). I could go on about other experiences with other GPs and specialists but I’ll stick to Covid and my experience yesterday.
This clinic accepts walk ins for testing between 12pm and 2pm. We arrive at 12:50 and are told to come back at 2pm. They have a parking area where you park, they call you, and you drive up to be tested.
We park at 1:23pm and wait. Partner is sick as a dog with a fever and trying to get food on his stomach while we are waiting. He gets a call from someone with a similar number saying someone at the clinic called him by mistake. Partner calls the clinic and they tell us to keep waiting and don’t know what happened. Finally it’s 2:20 and he says if they don’t call within five minutes to just drive up because we don’t see any other cars driving up or parking. At 2:25 he gets a text that says he needs to pull up at 2:15. Wtf... so we just pull around.
Luckily they’re fine with everything and do the test. Say we will get a call and email on result in 15-30 mins. Partner gets the call and Covid test is negative but (I’m assuming this is a doctor or PA) says the symptoms are concerning and they want to follow up with a PCR test to be sure. I told him to request a flu test as well, two birds one stone and if flu is positive he can get tamiflu. So doctor/PA tells us to come back at 7pm. I assume we are given an appointment.
We get there at 6:45 to be safe. Guy we talked to is walking by and tells us to pull over. We pull over and girl there asks if we have paperwork. We explain the situation and she says we have to go park and wait for a call. We sit over there parked from 6:50 until 7:38 and see at least 6 cars come after us and be called up and leave. Partner is hacked off and calls inside because they close at 8. Receptionist says she will go talk to them. Whatever she did they called us and told us to come up.
So basically we get a flu test and covid test for him and don’t get to speak to a doctor. So what if he has the flu? Who is going to prescribe him tamiflu? What do we do if this 102 fever doesn’t break? The guy from earlier calls back 15 mins later and says flu is negative and pcr will come back in 3-5 days. Basically treat it like covid positive. I told my partner if he gets an insurance bill and they’ve put a CPT code for an office visit with the tests that he needs to call them and tell them it’s coded wrong and insurance needs to make the clinic resubmit it properly. I don’t put it past them to try to slide that through.
I wanted to go into healthcare at one time. I dropped my nursing school spot and switched to economics. I understand the stress and overwhelm that healthcare providers are dealing with right now, but that doesn’t excuse not having a proper system in place and giving poor customer service. I and friends/loved ones have had to deal with this even before Covid.
If it’s not the doctors, it’s the pharmacies and insurance companies. The real issue with privatized for profit healthcare is that it’s in essence a business but providers and companies have no incentive to offer good customer service because it doesn’t actually operate like a competitive market. If a provider is crap you can’t just easily threaten to go to another provider because you have to go in network or some other bs reason that comes up. It really irritates me and hacks me off. I don’t even know what the solution is. I just get tired of going through it and seeing loved ones go through it when we’re already coming in because we aren’t feeling our best. The least providers could do is have a properly flowing system and treat patients with respect. Please get our prescriptions in on time when you say you’ll do it within 70 hours. Please bill our stuff properly so that our insurance will cover what it’s supposed to cover. Please respect our time as we respect yours if we show up early. Please be communicative with us and let us know what we need to do to keep things efficient for both of us. We may be your “customers” but we are also patients.
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Submitted September 02, 2020 at 01:24AM by Comrade_Soomie https://ift.tt/2QHzZGD