The highlight of my 2024/11/06 visit to this sick joke of a health care facility for what I hoped would be a thyroid lab work order and refills of a commonly-prescribed, generic medication used to treat a condition I've taken it for for over 30 years was the supposed physician by whom I was seen, whom a supposed CVS pharmacy tech said was named Jonathan Joseph, snarkily informing me that the swollen protrusions I was concerned about on each side of my neck were obstructed salivary glands I should treat by chewing or sucking on candy. Sour Patch Kids, perhaps?
I looked up at him from the exam room table I was sitting on and blinked in angry, disappointed amazement at his use of a sincere request for medical treatment as an opportunity to participate in a stalking and harassment campaign that has prevented me from consulting with anyone who behaves like a credentialed physician for over a decade.
There's definitely nothing wrong with my salivary glands.
Like Colleen Andrews at BMC, who was the previous "physician" who refused my request to order the standard battery of thyroid-related blood tests, he made a lame excuse about his unwillingness to do this: your insurance might not cover analysis performed by the labs we use. A more effective facility would've offered to have its receptionist check on this.
After he concluded the visit that lasted at most fifteen minutes by informing me that he'd only prescribe a thirty-day supply of the unnecessarily-expensive brand drug my insurance plan will only cover 90-day supplies of and that I didn't need to check out (suspicious), I took the opportunity to refill my water bottle at the sensor-activated fountain in the waiting room and left, resolved to replay the baffling, apparently-fraudulent visit in my head before reviewing it here.
Despite my explanation that I'd been unable to get an appointment with a new primary care physician since having to leave a previous one due to an insurance change and was disappointed with quality of care from BMC, he told me to follow up with my primary care physician.
While I'd been waiting to be seen by the "physician" with a last name that matched that of a former coworker who turned psycho on me and the first name of the previous tenant of my previous apartment while it also belonged to the pharmacist who filled my prescriptions at the pharmacy near that apartment, the Stepford Wife Redux of a receptionist could be heard telling someone on the phone, "No worries." Actually, people interacting with an urgent care facility typically have concerns that at least include pain or worry about an injury or medical condition, and may include stress over downtime, wound care, need for DME, scarring, or the challenge of paying their portion of the cost of the unanticipated expense. Sensitivity to this should replace breezy, glib assurances.
I was told I would've been advised of my might-be-pretend, MassHealth insurance plan, which doesn't even provide a card, not being accepted by the facility before I entered the exam room if this were the case.
Finally, prepare yourself for the Medical Treatment Seeker's Fatigue and possible confusion created by receipt of a flurry of email (five, with others possibly deleted since the visit) and text messages (two, excluding any deleted before it occurred to me to share their number here) from at least two entities supposedly connected to AFC Urgent Care, including one called Solv or Solv Health and another named American Family Care. One text message uses the word "discharge" not in conjunction with "record" or "document," but by itself, as if referring to vaginal discharge: "Your discharge will arrive via secure email." It goes on to tell you that the company provides the following dubiously-secure means of accessing it through "secure" email: "Password will be your First Name with a capital first letter."
Since when is "first name" a proper noun?
Caveat emptor. read more
