There comes a time in one’s life where one will find oneself in need of Urgent Care, but one is mindful of one’s health insurance and still has some steam, so one goes not to the ER but to, well, Urgent Care.
This is the predicament I and a friend found ourselves in last night, and went thusly to the Urgent Care clinic that is about 5 minutes from her house.
Now, to my mind, and I realize I’m picky, “urgent” means, “right now, or as close to right now as you can get”, and so I would imagine that all things that happen in an Urgent Care clinic happen “right now”, or at least with the attempt to make it as “right now” as possible. Urgent Care to me denotes moving quickly and with purpose, not frenetically but also not languidly.
In their defense, their doctor was very “right now”. My friend got a room, a bed, and within about five minutes an initial evaluation, some trial meds, etc. The Doctor Was Doing Something, and Doing Something Urgently. Check.
The front desk staff (and indeed, the telephone staff I called in advance) were Not Really Into My Definition of Urgent. As in, “Oh, if you don’t know her date of birth/social security number/mother’s maiden name/location of her baptismal socks” we can’t put you on the list of people we expect to see in the next fifteen minutes.” As in, “Oh, you need directions to the ER we told you to go to? Here let us go to mapquest and wait, print, um, wait while I answer the phone, now wait some more while I attend to someone else, continue waiting as I pull the pages from the printer and carefully, carefully staple them together, etc. — and wait some more”. As in, after the doctor said to pull up and double-park so they could walk my friend out to the car, “wait a second while I look at you strangely whilst you are double parked, then wave in recognition, but continue to not go and get your friend because I totally forgot we said we were going to do that.”
My recommendation therefore is if you find yourself in need of Urgent Care, sick a friend on the front-desk staff and get yourself in front of the doctor. And then try to have the friend find decent parking in front. You know, so she’s not double parked, like an idiot.
Bobbie Conti 