Urgent Care walk in clinic.

[MiniMerckx.22]

I just called the walk in clinic run by the hospital my PCP works for. I wanted to aak a question about a procedure I need; do they have the equipment in house for the job, what is my out of pocket with my insurance ?
You cannot speak with a person, no option for that. You can agree to "live text" with what I assume to be their AI system. I tried...
One question at a time....what is your first name? What is your last name? What is your date of birth? I feel like throwing a rock through their window with a note that says Answer your F'n phone.

I needed to call an orange tinted hardware store about a problem with a recent major purchase 2 days ago. AI system b#lldshit again, no humans to be found. What is this country coming to?
Sorry, just felt like ranting and my wife won't listen any longer.

[wolflen]

I needed to call an orange tinted hardware store about a problem with a recent major purchase 2 days ago. AI system b#lldshit again, no humans to be found. What is this country coming to?

Sorry, just felt like ranting and my wife won't listen any longer.

Ok..I mean no offense...perhaps your wife has been replaced with an AI sub..to quote a comic who would have much to say on the subject..

Judy Tenuta.." ...It could happen !..."

[Mick-7]

I just called the walk in clinic run by the hospital my PCP works for. I wanted to aak a question about a procedure I need; do they have the equipment in house for the job, what is my out of pocket with my insurance ?
You cannot speak with a person, no option for that. You can agree to "live text" with what I assume to be their AI system. I tried...
One question at a time....what is your first name? What is your last name? What is your date of birth? I feel like throwing a rock through their window with a note that says Answer your F'n phone.

I needed to call an orange tinted hardware store about a problem with a recent major purchase 2 days ago. AI system b#lldshit again, no humans to be found. What is this country coming to? Sorry, just felt like ranting and my wife won't listen any longer.

Urgent Care clinics are designed to deal with minor acute medical problems, and so generally only take appointments for that, they are not designed to provide general medical advice.

Re: the hardware store, the big corp. stores have sold their souls to Automation, so I prefer to deal with smaller businesses whenever I can.

I guess I'm just saying that if you know what to expect, you won't be upset when your expectations are fulfilled, the glass filled by AI is always half empty.

[sgosnell]

Corporations care about short-term profits. Nothing else. Executive salaries and bonuses (as important as salary) depend on that. Having a human answer the calls is more expensive than having a machine do it, so hiring a human is out of the question. This is not a new concept, corporate greed has always been with us, and corporations would have gone to machines long ago if the technology had been available. I suspect this is going to be one of the primary uses of AI technology. Fire all the humans who have to be paid a wage and benefits like health insurance, vacation time, etc, and let a computer do their jobs. That's absolutely the desire, whether or not the desire becomes reality. Many years ago I heard a CEO complain to a group of new hires, including me, that his biggest expense was salaries. It was impossible for the company to function without employees, but he sorely begrudged paying them. If he could have found a way to have computers fly the helicopters and care for the patients, he would have done that in a heartbeat. And he was a doctor, although no longer practicing. To quote an old saying, "money talks and bullshit walks". And many, if not most, corporate executives think their employees should be walking.

[MiniMerckx.22]

What the hell does that have to do with my post? As I stated I wasn't going to ask for general medical advice, but that isn't the point. It is an emergency medical provider and you can not speak with a human being via telephone. If you can't grasp the ridiculousness and stupidity of that policy you have bigger problems than me.

Urgent Care clinics are designed to deal with minor acute medical problems, and so generally only take appointments for that, they are not designed to provide general medical advice.

Re: the hardware store, the big corp. stores have sold their souls to Automation, so I prefer to deal with smaller businesses whenever I can.

I guess I'm just saying that if you know what to expect, you won't be upset when your expectations are fulfilled, the glass filled by AI is always half empty.

[Mick-7]

What the hell does that have to do with my post? As I stated I wasn't going to ask for general medical advice, but that isn't the point. It is an emergency medical provider and you can not speak with a human being via telephone. If you can't grasp the ridiculousness and stupidity of that policy you have bigger problems than me.

Hospitals provide emergency medical treatment, urgent care clinics do not, they are short staffed and set up to treat minor acute medical problems. In fact, if I call a local urgent care clinic, one of the first things I'll hear in their phone message is, "if you're having a medical emergency, call 911."

That being said, there are usually ways to bypass automated message systems, I don't deal with them enough (by choice) to know the effective methods but you can probably find that information on the internet. In the case of urgent care clinics, it's often best to go in during regular business hours and speak to someone, the people have not been replaced by robots just yet.

[sgosnell]

I've never known of an urgent care clinic that requires an appointment. They do accept, and prefer appointments, but they have to accept walk-ins. There are stand-alone emergency rooms, fully staffed, that are designed for more serious emergency visits. There are literally dozens of them in my area. I once took my wife to one, thinking it was an urgent care clinic. There was one of each in the same block. The cost was more, but not bankrupting. Hospital emergency rooms are for really serious injuries/illnesses, and generally very expensive. I would only go there in a life or death situation. The advice to call 911 in an emergency is because they don't know how serious the situation is, and getting an ambulance may be advisable. The range of medical problems ranges from no problem at all to imminent death, and everything in between. Some people call 911 for a cold. Some don't call even for a stroke or coronary emergency. If we have a medical problem that can be handled in an urgent care center, we just drive there and walk in, at least in most cases.

In the OP's case, just inquiring about a routine procedure, I understand the aggravation from having to deal with a computer rather than a real person. It didn't seem to be an emergency, or need for urgent care, and a phone call was reasonable. The system at my healthcare provider is better, and calls are answered by a human being. I appreciate that, but it isn't the case everywhere.

[benhatchins]

Walk-in clinics can definitely be useful when you need quick help and can’t wait forever for appointments. Healthcare systems everywhere seem overloaded these days. I once had to figure out how to write a complaint letter to hr after a workplace issue connected to medical leave and it was surprisingly stressful. Sometimes dealing with paperwork feels worse than the illness itself. Hopefully you managed to get proper treatment quickly.

[Marty Grass]

I worked in both urgent care clinics and emergency departments for years. Some others there were more bureaucratic than others and had expectations that weren't always met by the patients. I learned a lot dealing with people's expectations. Here is what I found.

1. Their definition of an emergency or urgency may not align with mine, but they are the ones who went out of their way to get help. I was there to provide help. This was even true when it was obvious that they were drug seekers who were obviously lying to get what they crave. Their ruse was not personal.

2. An important goal is to listen to them and try to help in any reasonable way. They should feel heard plus have received appropriate care when they leave.

My hardest shift was a July 4th weekend beginning at 6 PM Friday and ending 6 AM Tuesday. The emergency department in this rural area generally has few enough patients to get enough naps in over those days. What they didn't tell me is that the emergency department served four prisons in the area and that most doctors who had practices were out of town for the holiday weekend. It was busy.

The only ambulance service had one ambulance and one hearse, which doubled as an ambulance. The hospital did not have formal security. If there was a problem, Hank from maintanence would be summoned with his large wrench.

Tuesday morning at 6 I got in my car and drove more than an hour to start my day job.

This is the most sleep deprived I was in my life. Yet I heard the voices of my mentors throughout those days telling me that while I may not think these patients have an emergency, they believe they might. We go from there.

The moral is that if you can't see their perspective, or at least provide the respect as if you can, you don't belong in a service industry. This is also true with performers. Some come off as arrogant with no time for fans. That's a bad look.

I'm done.

[jim777]

I'm done.

Hey Marty, not too change the topic too much, but do you think of that HBO show, "The Pitt"? I work in a very large hospital myself (in IT though, I dropped out of pre-Med years ago due to ADHD I didn't know I had), and one of my daughters just graduated from Nursing school, and we always watched it together and just loved the show.